Bruce Springsteen - Magic (CD)

All Music Guide

Hailed as Bruce Springsteen's return to rock upon its release in fall 2007, Magic isn't quite as straightforward as that description would have it seem. True, this does mark another reunion with the E Street Band, only his second studio album with the group since 1984's Born in the U.S.A., giving this a rock roll heft missing from his two previous albums the dusty, literary Devils Dust and the raucous We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions and unlike The Rising, the first E Street Band album of the new millennium, there is no overarching theme here. It's just a collection of songs, something that Bruce hasn't done since Human Touch, or maybe even The River. All the ingredients are in place for a simple, straightahead rock album, except for two things: Springsteen didn't write a lot of flatout rock songs, and with his producer Brendan O'Brien, he didn't make an album that sounds much like a rock roll album, either. Magic is bright and punchy, a digitalage production through an...d through, right down to how each track feels as if it were crafted according to its own needs instead of the record as a whole. Underneath this shiny veneer, the E Street Band can still lift this music toward great heights, infusing it with a sense of majesty, but this is an E Street Band that was recorded piecemeal in the studio, pasted together track by track as the group fit sessions into their busy schedules. This approach gives the album a bit of a mannered, meticulous sound not unlike The Rising, but such careful construction was appropriate for Springsteen's cautious, caring 9/11 rumination; on Magic it tends to keep the music from reaching full flight. Then again, the songs here don't quite lend themselves to either the transcendent sweep of Born to Run or the downndirty roadhouse rockers that cluttered The River. There's a quiet melancholy underpinning this album. It's evident even on the harddriving "Radio Nowhere," whose charging guitars mask a sense of desperation, or the deceptively breezy "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," which grows more wistful with each passing chorus. "Girls" is also indicative of how Magic doesn't quite feel like classic E Street Band, even when it offers reminders of their classic sound: like "Born to Run," it trades upon Phil Spector, but here the band doesn't absorb the Wall of Sound; they evoke it, giving the song a nostalgic bent that emphasizes the soft sadness in his melody. This oddly bittersweet vibe that is shared by "Your Own Worst Enemy," whose baroque harpsichords uncannily reminiscent of the Left Banke are the biggest curveball here. Read more Less