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Bruce Springsteen: Western Stars

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia Records
Released: 2019.06.14
Time:
 51:07
Category: Roots Rock, Country Rock
Producer(s): Ron Aniello, Bruce Springsteen
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.brucespringsteen.net
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2020
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Hitch Hikin' (B.Springsteen) - 3:47
[2] The Wayfarer (B.Springsteen) - 4:18
[3] Tucson Train (B.Springsteen) - 3:31
[4] Western Stars (B.Springsteen) - 4:41
[5] Sleepy Joe's Café (B.Springsteen) - 4:14
[6] Drive Fast (The Stuntman) (B.Springsteen) - 4:16
[7] Chasin' Wild Horses (B.Springsteen) - 5:03
[8] Sundown (B.Springsteen) - 4:17
[9] Somewhere North of Nashville (B.Springsteen) - 3:52
[10] Stones (B.Springsteen) - 4:44
[11] There Goes My Miracle (B.Springsteen) - 4:05
[12] Hello Sunshine (B.Springsteen) - 3:56
[13] Moonlight Motel (B.Springsteen) - 4:16

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bruce Springsteen - Banjo, Celeste, Composer, Glockenspiel, 12 String & Acoustic & Electric Guitars, Hammond B3, Mellotron, Percussion, Piano, Producer, Soloist, Synthesizer Strings, Vocals

Ron Aniello - Bass, Upright Bass, Celeste, Drums, Engineer, Acoustic & Electric Guitars, Loops, Percussion, Piano, Producer, Synthesizer, Synthesizer Strings, Vibraphone, Background Vocals
Jon Brion - Drums, Electric Guitar, Timpani
Lenny Castro - Congas, Shaker, Tambourine
Matt Chamberlain - Drums
Charlie Giordano - Accordion, Piano
Rob Lebret - Engineer, Baritone & Electric Guitar
Greg Leisz - Pedal Steel
Marc Muller - Lap Steel Guitar, Pedal Steel
Gunnar Olsen - Drums
Ed Manion - Saxophone
Marty Rifkin - Pedal Steel
Matt Rollings - Piano
David Sancious - Piano

Rob Mathes - Arranger, Conductor
Sandy Park - Contractor, String Contractor
Shari Sutcliffe - Contractor
Scott Tibbs - Conductor
Lisa Kim - Concert Master, Violin
Alden Banta - Bassoon
Clark Gayton - Trombone
Vivek Kamath - Viola
Hyunju Lee - Violin
Dan Levine - Trombone
Liz Lim - Violin
Joanna Maurer - Violin
Suzanne Ornstein - Violin
Barry Danielian - Trumpet
Rachel Drehmann - French Horn
Desiree Elsevier - Viola
Charles Pillow - Oboe
Annaliesa Place - Violin
Emily Popham - Violin
Curt Ramm - Trumpet
Robert Rinehart - Viola
Alan Stepansky - Cello
Andrew Sterman - Alto Flute
Leelanee Sterrett - French Horn
Nathan Vickery - Cello
Luis Villa Lobos - Violin
Sharon Yamada - Violin
Jung Sun Yoo - Violin

Patti Scialfa - Vocal Arrangement, Vocals
Matthew Koma - Background Vocals
Curtis King - Background Vocals
Cindy Mizelle - Background Vocals
Michelle Moore - Background Vocals
Soozie Tyrell - Background Vocals

Toby Scott - Engineer, Loop, Production Coordination, Programming
Alec Dixon - Engineer
Ross Peterson - Engineer
Brett Rouche - Engineer
Chris Steffen - Engineer
Greg Koller - Engineer
Tom Elmhirst - Mixing
Bob Ludwig - Mastering
Danny Clinch - Photography
Kalle Gustafsson - Photography
Michelle Holme - Artwork, Design
Joe Visciano - Assistant

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded at the Stone Hill Studio, New Jersey



Western Stars is the nineteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released on June 14, 2019, by Columbia Records. It was produced by Ron Aniello, who worked with Springsteen on his two previous albums: Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014). The album was a chart success in the United States — where it became Springsteen's 20th top-10 album — and abroad. It was also met with widespread acclaim from critics, who found the music elegiac and evocative of the American West.

Springsteen stated in April 2019 that the album was influenced by "Southern California pop music" of the 1970s, including artists such as Glen Campbell and Burt Bacharach. Upon announcing the album in April 2019, he called it "a return to my solo recordings featuring character-driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements", with a press release characterizing it as about a "range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope".

"Hello Sunshine" was released on April 26, 2019, as the album's lead single, along with a music video. "There Goes My Miracle" was released as the album's second single on May 17. The album's third single, "Tucson Train", was released on May 30, along with a music video directed by Thom Zimny. A music video for the album's fourth single, "Western Stars", also directed by Zimny, was released on June 14. A limited edition 7" vinyl double A-side single, featuring "Western Stars" and "The Wayfarer", will be released on Black Friday Record Store Day on November 29, 2019.

Western Stars was released by Columbia on June 14, 2019. The following week, it debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with 66,000 album-equivalent units sold, of which 62,000 were pure album sales. It is Springsteen's 20th US top 10 album.

A documentary film, which marked Springsteen's directorial debut and features a full performance of the album, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019, with a wide theatrical release in October 2019 along with an accompanying soundtrack for the film. Springsteen will not be touring for the album and announced that he will shift focus towards recording a new studio album with the E Street Band in the fall of 2019.

Western Stars was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews and ratings from selected mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 84, based on 31 reviews.

Reviewing for Rolling Stone in May 2019, Will Hermes said that, while several songs "straddle the classic and the cliché", the album's music "evokes country-tinged California pop from the Sixties and Seventies, sounding like nothing [Springsteen]'s done before". In Entertainment Weekly, Maura Johnston applauded Springsteen for "transforming the enormous into the intimate" on the album, while The Independent's Mark Beaumont said the "sumptuous, cinematic album is nothing short of a late-period masterpiece" for the musician. Writing for NME, Thomas Smith regarded Western Stars as "majestic in its scale, but traditional in its subject matter and narratives … a wonderful thing." Pat Carty in Hot Press described the album as a "heartbreaking yet life-affirmingly beautiful record - both elegiac and warm, a trick few others, if any, could pull off." Sam Sodomsky from Pitchfork said, "Springsteen returns with elegiac and wise songwriting conjuring the golden expanse of the American West; it’s his best studio album in years." In the opinion of AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "This isn't a piece of nostalgia on Springsteen's part, though. These references deepen a collection of songs that are sweet, sad, and searching, songs that feel finely etched on their own terms but gather a deep, lasting resonance when collected on this enchanting album." The songs were also regarded by Alexis Petridis as "strong enough to withstand the treatment" and rarely reducing themselves to pastiches of "the grownup American pop of Glen Campbell's collaborations with Jimmy Webb or Harry Nilsson's [recordings] of 'Everybody's Talkin'' and 'I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City'." Writing in The Guardian, Petridis hoped Springsteen will "take more stylistic detours in the future", as "it adds up to an album that manages to be both unexpected and of a piece with its author’s back catalogue."

Some reviewers had reservations about the album. In his "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau deemed it a worthy effort and cited its highlights as "Tucson Train" and "Moonlight Motel". However, he believed Springsteen was trying to put across the message that "America used to be better", which the critic said brings to question in what manner will fans receive the musician's nostalgia for America's past: "How many of his faithful will blame it on the rich and how many on the young?" Ludovic Hunter-Tilney issued different complaints in his review for the Financial Times, being especially critical of the record's roots rock and orchestral pop setting. "The combination of twanging western rock and orchestra has a confected, forced feel", he said, adding that "the effect is intended to dignify the lives of the hard-bitten individuals in his lyrics, but instead it sounds like they are being smothered by overbearing string and horn arrangements."

wikipedia.org



Western Stars is a title that suggests wide-open, cinematic vistas, music made for the outer reaches of a widescreen. Such sweeping ambition isn't necessarily alien to Bruce Springsteen, a rocker who designed his self-styled 1975 breakthrough as a larger-than-life hybrid of AM pop and FM album rock profundity -- a daring fusion that eventually favored the latter, perhaps because it was easier for the E-Street Band to fill arenas with cranked amps and big riffs. Western Stars contains none of that rabble rousing. Springsteen plays and writes with a gentle touch on this 2019 album, his empathy evident in his series of story songs and character portraits and in his embrace of another aspect of AM radio that he previously avoided: orchestrated arrangements so rich and enveloping they can sound softly trippy. Taking his cues from the lush hits Jimmy Webb wrote for Glen Campbell, Springsteen never opts for music that is as opulently ornate as his inspirations. His words are a little too direct, for one, a combination of cannily sturdy clichés tempered by startling turns of phrase that pulls songs into perspective. The clichés are intentional. All of its allusions to the culture of the '60s and early '70s -- the swirling strings, the songs of wanderlust, the wink to Leiber & Stoller in the title of "Sleepy Joe's Café," a nod to Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" on "Hello Sunshine" -- conjure a collective memory of a time when hippie ideals faded in the dawn of the '70s. This isn't a piece of nostalgia on Springsteen's part, though. These references deepen a collection of songs that are sweet, sad, and searching, songs that feel finely etched on their own terms but gather a deep, lasting resonance when collected on this enchanting album.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - AllMusic.com



Bruce Springsteen has spoken repeatedly about the influence of cinema on his music. Throughout the years, in numerous interviews (and his recent autobiography), he conjures impressions and memories of films that imprinted on his mind at a young age, and how the bold narratives and striking imagery of classics from the ’60s and ’70s helped him shape his own lyrical characters and musical journeys. And now, 18 albums and nearly 50 years into his career, his new album sounds for all the world like a soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist—and in the very style of those long-ago pictures that so moved him.

The press materials for Western Stars, the Boss’ new solo release without his trusty E Street Band, have said the album is a tribute to the Southern California pop of his youth. But its influences seem much more midcentury cinematic Americana. The sweeping, bombastic scores of Alfred Newman or the populist orchestral sounds of Aaron Copland are more immediate reference points than a stylish Laurel Canyon aesthetic. Nearly every song slowly builds in like manner to a swelling eruption of strings, horns, and more, with a front-loaded mix that sees this instrumentation drown out the guitars and rhythm sections that function as the skeletal frame. It conjures up the vision of some forgotten Altman-esque road trip movie of the mid-’70s, but it also tends to swallow up the Springsteen-ness of it all, like Springsteen is fading into the background of his own music, the cinematic world in which he’s always envisioned his characters now taking over wholesale. Remembrance of that bygone era is no longer one influence among many, but all there is.

This is most evident in tracks like “Chasin’ Wild Horses,” with its violin melody prefacing his mournful lyrics about the pains of living a life without the hope for something more. What begins with a simple accompaniment of guitar plucks and a loping, brushes-on-snare rhythm, delicate and evocative, slowly builds until the strings take over, the too-loud arrangements weakening instead of elevating the material. It’s a variant of the problem he had on Lucky Town: Where that record tried too hard to recreate the rock ’n’ roll revivalist-tent salvation vibe—a hallmark of his live performances—by adding ingredients until the songs became weighted down by pomposity, this one traffics too much and too directly in the ’70s Americana that affected him. He’s chasing a sound defined largely by nostalgia, and if anyone should know the dangers of trying to recapture the past, it’s Springsteen.

That’s not to say the record is misconceived. Some of the songs are indeed best captured by the sweeping scope of orchestral grandeur that the musician (aided by producer Ron Aniello, who’s been working with the Boss since 2012’s Wrecking Ball) has crafted alongside a small army of collaborators, mostly string and horn players, though longtime musical friends like former E Streeter David Sancious pop up in small amounts as well. The best example of this method succeeding is “Stones,” the album centerpiece. With a languid and potent rhythm, his repeated refrain of “Those are only the lies you’ve told me” takes on a cathartic beauty, the blend of strings and guitars working in perfect tandem, showing there can be a fusion of these tools that works. It’s terrifically moving, lush and expertly layered in ways that exceed the simple and predictable bombast of the other arrangements.

But among successes like the bracing “Tucson Train” or steel guitar swing of the title track, there’s clunkers like “Sundown” or “There Goes My Miracle,” full of the kinds of blunt-force mixing effects that have bogged down Springsteen’s studio tracks throughout his career—a sure sign of the musician trying too hard and playing around in the studio for too long. Despite the latter’s memorable refrain melody, it features some of the most treacly writing of his career: “Heartache, heartbreak... the book of love holds its rules / disobeyed by fools.”

There’s an overwhelming consistency to Western Stars, a welcome quality after the scattershot kitchen-sink approach of 2014’s High Hopes. (The most welcome development, though, is that Tom Morello and his caterwauling guitar solos are nowhere to be found.) And the leftover influence of Springsteens’s Seeger Sessions work that recurred throughout his last couple releases has been fully purged. Still, the larger-than-life arrangements that feel perfectly calibrated to the cheap seats when executed by a world-class rock ’n’ roll band end up sounding reductive (and at times, dangerously close to Muzak) when translated into the sounds of a mini-orchestra. It’s a delight to hear the man summon the musical spirits of his past, but it’s all a bit overly tasteful and mannered to have the force as his usual work. The rough-around-the-edges element of his music has always been a highly calculated aspect of Springsteen’s perfectionist tendencies, but in crafting this record of genteel retro Americana, his smooth sound is missing some bite.

Alex McLevy - 6/12/2019
The A.V. Club



Bruce Springsteen has spent the past few years reminding observers why he’s called the Boss — writing an autobiography, playing the longest shows of his marathon-studded career, selling out a run on Broadway. Now that the footlights have dimmed, he’s back to releasing music, and his 19th album is a gorgeous love letter to the idea of songs providing salvation, a credo that has animated his four-decade-plus recording career.

Western Stars, Springsteen’s first full album of originals since 2012, opens with the 69-year-old’s weathered burr — still one of American music’s most singular instruments, but a bit gnarled by time — paired with a fingerpicked guitar, singing of hitting the road with nothing but his songs and his dreams. The song, “Hitch Hikin’,” is a slow-burner, its gradually swelling orchestration adding gravitas to the images the narrator collects during his travels — telephone poles and trees, dashboard photos, the illusion of constant movement. It’s dreamy in a way that recalls passenger-side views on late-night drives, beckoning the listener to come along for the rest of the ride.

Springsteen has said Western Stars is his homage to the pop music that flowed from Southern California in the late ’60s/early ’70s. The lush arrangements of songs like the heart-eyed “Tuscon Train” and the brokenhearted, string-laden “There Goes My Miracle” certainly recall the era of Bacharach and Webb. The coda of “Stones” gives his stoic vocals an emotional counterpoint by way of a twisty, insistent violin solo.

Stars‘ storytelling is also peppered with the hope-filled characters that the New Jersey native has drawn over his career: The central figure of the boot-scooting “Sleepy Joe’s Café” “came home in ’45 and took out a GI loan/On a sleepy little spot an Army cook could call his own”; the eponymous narrator of the simmering “Drive Fast (The Stuntman)” “was looking for anything, any kind of drug to lift me up off this ground” and found love on a B-movie set; the drifter of “Hello Sunshine” looks for redemption on barren streets.

Placing intricately detailed portraiture on massive musical backdrops has been a Springsteen trademark for years, of course, and Western Stars continues this legacy, transforming the enormous into the intimate. That’s the sort of magic Springsteen specializes in conjuring — and he clearly has little interest in slowing down his ride.

Maura Johnston - June 11, 2019
Entertainement Weekly
 

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