Bruce Springsteen – American Beauty Review

Record Store Day does have its uses beyond fleecing people for old albums or odd bits. It allows artists to open the vault of unreleased recordings, scrape a few onto vinyl and later release them regularly. Such is the case for American Beauty, a four-track EP from Bruce Springsteen. Let us be frank about the state of Springsteen at this time. A country twang was chased after and the result is a wavering voice at its lowest ebb. He would soon bounce back with a sophisticated approach to his stage presence and some staggering, open joys to his written work. But American Beauty feels like four songs which, had it not been to hit contractual obligations, would never have been released. It should have stayed in the vault. Our desire to hear everything from an artist leads us down dark, unpaved paths like this.  

His heartland rock at this stage had lost its charm and for title track American Beauty it is the strangled vocals paired with a relatively plain set of rock materials which cause trouble. A man responsible for so many of the all-time great albums can have a few loose ends, but the release of these outtakes shows there is more pruning to the released materials than first thought. It is not just a shock and awe set of circumstances which got Springsteen to this grand point of his career but a steadiness in what was released, in who had a say in where it was being printed. American Beauty veers well away from the sound Springsteen is known for and the sound he now parades on stage. These are footnotes in every sense of the word.  

These uncomfortable truths to his sound at this point in his career are tough to swallow, tougher still when there is heart bounding through the likes of Mary Mary. Quintessential rock and roll star Springsteen swings out with softer touches, and they work. They just need forming that little bit better, a sliver more articulation and these are booming, great songs. Instead, they feel chillingly straight and narrow in their view of country music and almost unrecognisable thanks to some vocal manipulation. It can be heard most of all on Hurry Up Sundown. Wincing through the new vocal changes Springsteen calls on himself for with the likes of this track is a difficult challenge. Not because there is an expectation of his sound but because Springsteen here fails to stand out among the volume increase of the heartland genre.  

Pack the blues up and retreat to self-reflection. Gone was the edge of Born in the U.S.A. and in comes a testing of the country rock waters. American Beauty is rather ugly, in effect. Throwaway songs these may be, the four tracks presented on this Record Store Day collection are, at best, unremarkable. At their worst, they provide a worrying change of pace for Springsteen which he has only recently backed away from. Hey Blue Eyes is likely the best of the bunch, a heartwarming and stripped-back track where Springsteen allows his voice and vocal work to flourish. He would do so again eight years later with a collection of covers – but the likes of American Beauty feel like trials of what was to come. Hey Blue Eyes is worth the time it takes to get there, of the harsh and almost bitter love and openness within. It makes up for the rest of American Beauty.