New Springsteen Album "Western Stars" June 14*

This thread has truly denigrated. I come here to hear opinions, etc. about the MUSIC of Western Stars and SPRINGSTEEN. This is all so distasteful.

Not that anyone would probably care, but I’ll take some time away from this one for a while...

 

Jagger is fortunate in that he kept his hair—however much it’s dyed- and stayed skinny, two prerequisites in the rock and roll business.
There’s that creased and leathery face, but it’s served him well.
He’d be a fool to mess with that.

 

I would be normally inclined to agree with you, but it’s undeniable that his appearance and the image he projects is s big part of the story , especially since the man has been an aged- defying dynamo for the past few decades.

 

His voice sounds great on WS. Rich, full. It’s good to hear him sing, rather than the clipped twang he’s used so much in recent years. I do wonder what kind of technology might have been used to enhance it, but the finished product is great.

 

I am not an authority on Bruce Springsteen's voice or his career by any stretch of the imagination, but I've come to admire his talent more and more over the years. As I said before in another post, it all started for me with the Roy Orbison Back & White Night special and just grew from there. I tend to go for singers with big voices and huge vocal ranges like Elvis and Roy, but I have got to tell you that Bruce' s singing just blew me away on the Blue-ray version of Western Skies. I am sure there was some small "sweetening" to the remix as Dr. Zoom points out in his fine post above, but the fact is that Bruce hits some notes that really surprised me in the live concert. I mean engineers can almost always make a studio album sound pretty great, but with a concert video it is much harder to mask live vocal imperfections or limitations. This beautifully shot concert video has become one of my very favorites in my collection of well over 50, and it includes everybody from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley.

 

I agree, it reminds me of the hateful fat Elvis talk. Human nature, I reckon? I just try to ignore it and find interesting comments about the music.

 

That is the very first thing I thought of was the Elvis comparison. One of my favorite Elvis posters around this forum is @GillyT, and she once addressed the infatuation that even some male Elvis fans have with tearing down Elvis for letting them all down by getting fat and less attractive in his last few years, and yet she said that women in general were far more likely to cut Elvis some slack as they had a more balanced and sympathetic view of the situation. I wish I could find her post in order that I could quote it exactly, but it really made you stop and think about how indignant we men sometimes get when our icons fail to live up to the physical standards we set up for them. We should be so hard on our own physical shortcomings as we age, I think not.

 

Springsteen’s vocals on The River were outstanding too. Especially on the ballads. He had a nice rich croon. They stacked his vocals with a ton of reverb, and the result was great.

 

My original post was of concern for his health, and if his appearance is due to Health Meds or cumulative Vanity Surgeries, I have no idea. The plastic surgery never entered my mind, I’m not that knowledgeable of such things.

My original take was age, hearing and/or dental work.

His ego wasn’t.

It reminded me of Stills several years ago.

Sorry if that derailed the thread.

So back to the music.....

Let’s talk how Pattie added nothing to the pieces.

 

Not at all a fan, but I'll check this out.

 

It is highly likely that some sort of recording technology was applied to Springsteen's vocals on WS. I agree that the finished product is great.

Agreed. Especially on the title track, which I would argue was the finest lead vocal he ever laid down on tape.

 

Yes, definitely one of his best. The River is a very range-y song, and he nailed it perfectly.

 

i think, not 100% sure, that 'western stars' will be on HBO in may.

 

Western Stars - the studio album - is a work of art.

As a peripheral observer of his work, I'm impressed that Springsteen has come forward this late in his career with something so compact and yet complete. It has resonances with Dylan's 'Time Out Of Mind'.

Chasin' Wild Horses is to this 63 year old today what My Generation was in 1972.

 

Western Stars brought me back to Springsteen's music, and I'd like to know more about it. Even Wikipedia offers no hint. It was probably recorded over a period of time, but when was it started? What is the oldest track? Was it assembled from various other dormant or ongoing projects into a cohesive album around a certain theme--or was it wholly conceived from the start? The vocals from "Sundown" versus the vocals from "Somewhere North of Nashville" sound like they were recorded 20 years apart.

Was it originally recorded solo and then the tapes given to Ron Aniello to complete? Do some of the songs go back to Working On a Dream sessions? Are there E Street Band versions of some of these songs? Might E Street Band contributions have been wiped from these recordings with new instruments added? Was the album conceived with strings in mind--or were they added later?
Why would Bruce sit on songs of such high quality ?

 

All I know for sure is Marc Muller (local NJ musician) worked on it like 7-8 years earlier. He told me he had forgotten most of it. Then he was brought back years later to put some touches on it, and then played the barn concert.

It seems like a project Springsteen tinkered with bit by bit for a long time. Sundown and Miracle sound WOAD-era but who knows. There are a gazillion musician credits, which suggests it was compiled over a long period.

 

'wastern stars' premiers on HBO on wednesday may 6 at 8:35 in the morning...............guess springsteen doesn't get prime time anymore. and for the time listed it is never on in prime time, but it only goes to friday the 8th right now.

 

And he'd be a fool to cry, as well.

 

There’s no use in crying anyway

 

Ehh. TOOM is light-years better than Western Stars — though I realize Dylan's vocals (and Daniel Lanois's production) are problematic for some listeners.

 

I don't think Barney R. was actually comparing the albums per se, just saying they resonate as unexpected late career albums which rightly achieved a lot of acclaim. For Dylan, TooM was the start of a rejuvenation certainly. Springsteen tougher to peg since he works so differently.

 

It remains to be seen if Western Stars is the beginning of a rejuvenation. I was floored by it , in part because I’d pretty much written off Bruce as creative artist at this stage of the game — three or four mediocre ( or worse) albums in a row drove me to that conclusion.
I hope his next album continues the late career resurgence.

 

This may be heresy to some, but since the reunion, I’ve enjoyed more of his non-ESB band releases (D&D, Seeger, WS) than his ESB stuff.
He tends to slip into formula and a bit of caricature when he does stuff with the ESB.

 

I’ve felt this way for a long time. I love the ESB but sometimes it’s just too “big.” Sometimes that can overwhelm a song.

 

I thought his voice was very good on "Jersey Girl" in particular. Of course his appearance is different, it's just him and his wife appearing in front of an empty room, and these are tough times for all of us. I wish Bruce all the best and hope he'll get back on the road as soon as this thing is over. Oh, and I'd like a new album too, please, because "Western Stars" is so damn good - probably my favourite record from the past five years at least, maybe the last ten years...