Soulful charms and the disarming sense of reinvention for a seasoned artist are often dangerous. It provides Bruce Springsteen with a moment to depend on his voice and how it adapts to soul music. Turn Back the Hands of Time feels a celebratory moment for that, an album track that has since released of its own accord as a refreshing, post-release single for Only the Strong Survive. Covering a Tyrone Davis classic provides Springsteen with a little less freedom with his vocal range, not because he isn’t adapting as well here, but because his backing instrumental band take the spotlight from the Born to Run musician. Not necessarily a negative, though the vocal presence Springsteen provides here is gruff and throaty.
That gravelly vocal arrangement proves successful for Turn Back the Hands of Time, another piece from Springsteen’s range of covers that feel handpicked to be used as a moment of reflection. Springsteen has done much with his career, and the more Only the Strong Survive is engaged with, the more reflective it feels. Even if these words are not his own, Springsteen makes them feel personal and broad. That is the clear sign of a good and earnest cover song. Bringing out a big band feel to Turn Back the Hands of Time improves on an original that featured mellower, slower tones. Springsteen’s replacement of those moments is consistent throughout his latest album and is as equally rewarding as it is vaguely controversial to change the fabric and score of a classic. Springsteen gets away with it more because his efforts are excellent, than anything else.
Wedged into the rest of the album, though, and Turn Back the Hands of Time is not exactly the greatest piece of the bunch. It is certainly a solid number, but nothing that inspires the range and adaptability found on the likes of Nightshift or 7 Rooms of Gloom. Rare it is to see an artist lean so heavily onto a collection of covers; it is quite disarming for Springsteen to do so. Turn Back the Hands of Time scuppers the chance to be anything more than a light style of the pop-soul genre, but that is more than enough for this track. Springsteen is unable to add an extra layer with this cover, as he does with Nightshift, the key to unlocking Only the Strong Survive. Yet even without adapting something new, this is a quality cover that has marginal differences from that of the original.
As long as difference is cemented, then it is hard to wholly deflect or be disinterested in the theme and value of a Springsteen cover. Adapting work can often be harder to make an emotional connection to. Its narrative is already in place, its experience unique to the artist who first penned it. To find a relation to or in the message found on Turn Back the Hands of Time is an experimentation for Springsteen, whose efforts here are solid but don’t turn out a masterclass, as other stages of the album find. Even then, the disarming lightness and sincerity of a track like this in the hands of a legendary musician are warm and accompanied well by a band that sticks to a wall of sound form.
