New Springsteen Album "Western Stars" June 14*

As long as you insert "Somewhere North of Nashville" between Sundown and Moonlight Motel.

 

So you’re having the album’s lead character die on the fourth song, instead of at the end?

A new resurrection record.

 

I mentioned this before, but I think as listeners we're benefitting from knowing about some of the issues that Bruce dealt with, including depression and his mother's health. I think much of that, or at least a lot of the details, came out through the autobiography and Broadway show. So if this album had come out instead of Wrecking Ball in 2012 or so, it'll still be that great music, but we wouldn't have that extra insight into the songs.

I'm so glad to have this album.

 

I get your point, but I would rather have had these songs in 2012 instead of Wrecking Ball.

 

I think Chasin’ Wild Horses has become my favorite track on the album.

 

Hahaha exactly. Moonlight Motel must be the last track in every possible iteration. You cannot have much of a story after the murder-suicide of the hero!

 

I think this is my favorite album in his entire catalog (and I've got them all, like most of us). What a great piece of work. I would like to see a timeline of when each of these was recorded - his vocals are incredible on this record.

 

My reading of MM is actually a murder-suicide. He had company, didn't he?

 

Not saying the narrator definitely commits suicide, but the song is open to that interpretation if you want to see it there, and that makes it a great piece of art.

An older man ("And the wind blew through the window and blew off the covers Of my lonely bed"), all alone at the end of his life is driven back to the once deserted, now haunted Motel, where he remembers his happiest moments with his long gone lover, his one true love. There is nothing left for him in the here & now present, all his happiness lives is in the past.

Everything about this song works as a haunted ghost story to me. The deserted Motel could might as well be a graveyard calling him back to this ritual that has been performed before, the raising and pouring of a toast for a long forgotten love.

But this time the ritual is perhaps different. Its this line, after he pours the two drinks "Then it was one more shot poured out onto the parking lot To the Moonlight Motel"

The line just hangs there, and the word "shot" stands out so starkly, the only time it's used.

 

I agree with everything you've said. This song could be a movie.

 

There was no one else in the car with him. One shot for him. One for his beloved ex. And then one more to the sky.

I know what I make of it. The album is a masterpiece, by the way.

 

Or a Mavericks song......

 

Or a Dwight Yoakam song.....

 

There are so many small yet fantastic songwriting touches in this album. One that I've been keen on lately is in Moonlight Motel. After the line "I pulled in and stopped into my old spot", I always expect the verse to keep going. But there's that pause in the lyrics, with the instruments setting the scene for that perfect last verse. Wow.

 

Just finished listening to this. Anyone else experience pops and clicks on record 2 of the vinyl version. Sending back to Amazon for a replacement.
Anyone else experience this, if so i will cancel the replacement and just order the CD. Could be a defective batch.

 

I'm hearing lyric lines and little pieces of melody rolling around in my head throughout the day. It's an album that got under my skin, which hasn't happened to me in ages.

 

I agree. The main melody for Tuscon Train has been stuck in my head basically ever since that song was released weeks ago.

 

I have been playing this CD almost everyday and it is emerging as one of my favorite albums of all time. Stones just blows me away every time I hear it. Chasin' Wild Horses and Sundown are both outstanding. Tucson Train could have been a huge country-pop hit back in the day when country radio actually played great songs with great melodies. There Goes My Miracle and Hello Sunshine could have been huge radio hits back in those days too. I coming at this as a very casual Bruce fan, who only had one album of his in my entire record collection, and that was his Greatest Hits. I am looking for recomendations for what is the next album of his that I should try to get my hands on, knowing how much I love Western Stars.

 

Any definitive answer on where the photo shoot for the album/promotion took place? It looks like my neighborhood.

 

I COULD NOT get "Hitch Hikin'" out my head today. Walked to the market with my wife this morning, singing it to quietly to myself the whole way.

 

Tunnel Of Love maybe.
That being said Western Stars is a glorious outlier in Bruce’s career.A masterpiece I had long given up hope he would ever create again.

 

I hear one very slight tick on "Chasing Wildhorses." Otherwise a quiet and pleasant pressing. Got the black vinyl from Amazon.

 

It’s just great folks!