From its bright, brittle production to its tossed-off postage stamp cover art,
Working on a Dream is in every respect a companion piece to
Magic, an album that's merely a set of songs, both sprawling and deliberately small, songs that don't necessarily tackle any one major theme but all add up to a portrait of their time.
Magic chronicled the dog days of
Bush where
Working on a Dream is designed as a keynote to the
Obama age, released just a week after the inauguration of the U.S.'s 44th president and not coincidentally containing not a little optimism within its 13 tracks. This sense of hope is a tonic to the despair that crept into the margins of
Magic but it's easy to posit
Working on a Dream as pure positivity, which isn't exactly true: a hangover from
W lingers, most vividly in the broken spirit of "The Wrestler," and
Bruce mourning departed
E Street Band member
Danny Federici with "The Last Carnival."
Springsteen peppers his tribute with images recalling the early days of
the E Street Band but saves a revival of their wild, woolly sound for the opening "Outlaw Pete," a cavernous, circular, comical epic reminiscent of
Springsteen's unwieldy portraits of rats on the Jersey Shore. "Outlaw Pete" is
Working on a Dream at its best, playing like nothing less than
The E Street Shuffle as reflected and refracted through
Arcade Fire's naked hero worship, casually highlighting how producer
Brendan O'Brien has gently nudged
the Boss toward new musical avenues. Many of these new sounds are drawn from the past, often feeling informed by
Little Steven's Underground Garage --
Van Zandt and
Nils Lofgren's guitars chime like
the Byrds; the band knocks out a tough little blues number on "Good Eye"; and
Springsteen shows a knack for pure pop on "Surprise, Surprise" and indulges his ever-increasing
Brian Wilson fascination on "This Life," whose percolating organs and harmonies rival
the High Llamas. All this rests nicely alongside
the Boss' trademarks -- galloping rockers that fill a stadium ("My Lucky Day") and their polar opposite, his intimate acoustic tunes ("Tomorrow Never Knows") -- which all make
Working on a Dream read like a rich, inventive, musical album...which it is, to an extent. The ideas and intent are there, but the album is hampered slightly by the overall modesty of
Springsteen's writing -- by and large, these are small-scale songs and feel that way -- and hurt significantly by the precise, digital production that muffles the music's imagination and impact. A large part of
Springsteen's appeal has always been how
the E Street Band has sounded as big and open as his heart, but
Working on a Dream, like
Magic before it, has a production that feels tiny and constrained even as it is layered with extraneous details. It's possible to listen around this production and hear the modest charms of the songs, but the album would be better if the sound matched the sentiment.