"I'm Working on A Dream"

Less than two years since Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released Magic, a lush new collection of songs that hearkened back to their boisterous past of The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle, the Boss and band got together and put together Working on a Dream, the most sonically diverse album since Born to Run. And damned if it doesn’t offer up a host of surprises along the way.

Springsteen, who has proved himself the most literate rock writer since Dylan, is a master-smith when it comes to recording albums that ably balance epic storytelling with numbers that encapsulate entire feelings and moments in one song. His subjects are as wide ranging as the music on Dream, whether he’s tackling the old west, having a major jones for the check-out girl at the grocery store, or laboring in this fading world to create something meaningful. If all this sounds a bit heady, don’t worry – Springsteen is having too much fun to get dragged down by anything. If the album had an overarching theme, it is hope, which blazes forth from even the darkest subjects.

As far as opening numbers go, good luck finding any this year more immediately arresting or dramatic than “Outlaw Pete,” a Guthrie/Williams/Dylan-esque story of a cowboy cursed by bad luck since before he was born. The song is eight minutes long, and starts quiet but crashes like a storm by the end, with a fantastic guitar solo and Springsteen’s voice overpowering everything as the voice of God or the thunder, wailing “Outlaw Pete, can you hear me?” The Boss hasn’t sounded this big coming out of the gate since “Thunder Road.”

From there he gets into some of the most upbeat songs he’s written in a while, with “My Lucky Day” and “What Love Can Do.” “Surprise, Surprise” sounds like a forgotten British Invasion hit that Springsteen dusted off and added his own touch to.

“Queen of the Supermarket” displays why he was aptly called the “next Dylan” when he first arrived on the music scene, with this gem of a story about a lonely man who finds love – or just lust – with a girl who works at a supermarket, but can’t say anything about it. The lyrics read like something John Updike would be proud of but the music has the dramatic sweep of Phil Spector’s wall of sound.

Always a realist, the album’s “darker” numbers tackle the uncertainty of the future, and the acceptance of death. The bouncy “Tomorrow Never Knows” bleeds into “Life Itself,” which sounds like what many would call “classic Bruce.” It’s an admission that life will ultimately lose to time no matter what, and all one can do is find someone to help make it through the day.

Of course, the title track could have been Obama’s theme song just as easily as “The Rising,” and is as genuine a song about the longing for hope and what it takes to bring it about as anyone could ask for. While Springsteen is clearly aware that all’s not well in the country, there’s nothing to stop it from getting better.

The album’s closer, a gorgeous elegy for organ player Danny Federici, is the follow up to “Wild Billy’s Circus Story,” and paints a lonesome picture of the carnival closing for the last time as the sun sinks behind the horizon. Federici, and fans, couldn’t ask for a better song to tie together an album that shows for Springsteen and the E Street Band, the show is still going on.

“The Wrestler,” for which Springsteen won a Golden Globe for, is a nice bonus cut, and fits well with the rest of the album, but Dream would have been just as stellar without it. The only thing really missed is more of Clarence Clemons wailing saxophone, but otherwise there’s little to bitch about.

Two stellar Springsteen albums within two years, and one his best in years; as he sings in “The Wrestler,” “tell me friend/can you ask for anything more?”