Bruce Springsteen – Lucky Town Review

Any star burning as brightly and for as long as Bruce Springsteen is going to fade out somewhere down the line. It is the age-old inevitability of pop-stardom. That rise of incredible material, the roaring successes of a decade at the top of his game, all to slump out into some niche pastiche of the sound which defined him. He came up with the working, winning tools and yet is left in the dust by the advancements made by those influenced by him. Lucky Town remains fascinating because it stands as a record made by an influential figurehead of rock being left behind by the genre. How telling it is that this and Human Touch were released on the same day. Two albums and, between them, an EP worth of material worth listening to. The rest is filler. The Boss is rarely, if ever, associated with stock options. But Lucky Town is filled with them and their obvious conclusions.  

A fading experience where a legend tries to cobble together some new definition of alt-country. It works in that limited way. Opener Better Days has some clunky lyrical moments but is ultimately a better shot at the world surrounding Springsteen than anything else featured within. He clamours for the better days after such a slump of form. Lucky Town and Local Hero feel like pale imitations of what Springsteen could once do. There is no power behind those jamming tambourines or the relatively plain guitar work found within. Harmonica implementations feel more like they are included for the sake of it than for any reason of creative development. Lucky Town remains fine. An inoffensive venture from Springsteen where the lacklustre depths of If I Should Fall Behind has a brutal knock-on effect. Those leaps of faith heard on the aptly titled Leap of Faith are just not taken.  

This demand from Springsteen, to himself no less, to show some guts and push on falls on deaf ears. The Big Muddy has some sense of changing the formula but it is too little, too late. An isolated incident of interest where the acoustic echoes and snake bites regress the country and folk stylings found within Lucky Town. Springsteen retreads the momentous work of Born in the U.S.A. briefly too, using Souls of the Departed as a knock-on of the Gulf War in a similar fashion to his disgust on the 1984 masterpiece. There are moments of note to Lucky Town, of course. No Springsteen album is without salvation. It comes in the form of Living Proof, the horrors and heartbreaks of finding strangers in your bed, of finding no new suggestion from the world out there of what to do next.  

Where should we turn in times of crisis? Behind us? Turn to the past as Book of Dreams does. Lucky Town kicks into gear when it feels too late to change the form. Yet Springsteen provides some of his most heartbreaking, reflective moments in the latter stages of this pop-oriented release. He suddenly remembers who he is, and what he is capable of. It may be a tad late but at least there are signs of life. Closer My Beautiful Reward is a complete turnaround. He avoids catastrophe by maintaining the folk tones which felt so closed-off and plain to begin with. Conviction is all it takes and as that cold wind batters his back, the courage to continue the beaten path with this urgency, this feeling of a next step worth taking, is admirable, even if it does not come together as smoothly as expected.