Western Stars is, annoyingly, another fantastic album to add to your rotation. But then it is a Bruce Springsteen album. Of course it’s superb.
With its tension between escapism and responsibility, Western Stars is an album about reaching the end of the road, and what you might find there.
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.
Despite the lower volume, Bruce Springsteen sounds positively invigorated on Western Stars. With a new sonic palette and renewed focus on the LP as a means of writing short stories, it’s easily his best album of new material since 2007’s Magic.
What Springsteen most impressively accomplishes with Western Stars, however, is furthering his legacy among the greatest American songwriters of the modern era. Much like Guthrie, Dylan, Nelson, and Petty – all of whom are clear sources of inspiration – the great American songbook would be incomplete without Springsteen.
Western Stars is simply a staggering record. One that few of us could have anticipated Springsteen was capable of, this late in his career. If I was a musician starting out now, and heard this album, I think I’d just hang my guitar up in defeat.
Majestic in its scale, but traditional in its subject matter and narratives, ‘Western Stars’ is a wonderful thing.
The more understated material also hits home on a majestic album that combines lyrical richness with subdued orchestral arrangements.
Similarly, with so much to unpack, Western Stars grows more satisfying with repeated exposure. Deeply moving, inventive and even a bit risky, Western Stars will take its place among Springsteen's solo gems.
Western Stars is Springsteen at his most novelistic, scratching out pocket portraits that owe as much to the printed word of John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver or even Jack Kerouac as they do a lineage that would boast weather-beaten troubadours like Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Webb, or his younger self.
When the penny dropped, and I could imagine Glen Campbell in his pomp singing these songs, Western Stars moved from momentary curiosity to something that feels like it will last.
Springsteen’s first album in five years delivers a sound like little else in his extensive catalogue, brimming with lush strings and French horns.
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.
It adds up to an album that manages to be both unexpected and of a piece with its author’s back catalogue. Normal service may well be resumed in due course, but Western Stars is powerful enough to make you wish Bruce Springsteen would take more stylistic detours in the future.
‘Western Stars’ is an understated triumph, righting the wrongs of his last few releases and more than emphasises the fact that Springsteen is still brilliant enough to be invested in.
Western Stars shows Springsteen pulling back the curtain on his craft in much the same way Springsteen on Broadway did. In fact, in its elliptical narratives, it might have the makings of a good musical itself.
Western Stars is erratic in the first half, as Springsteen’s need for exposition sometimes grinds uneasily against the sweep of the music. But the second half is a profound pleasure.
Rest assured, Springsteen sounds confident and comfortable on Western Stars. His 1984 self that hoped to make different kinds of records would be proud, maybe even surprised.
In Western Stars, the old adage about finding meaning through the journey couldn't feel truer. And that's an idea that Springsteen can relate to—leaving a little bit of yourself in a landscape that feels immortal.
Bruce Springsteen returns with elegiac and wise songwriting conjuring the golden expanse of the American West; it’s his best studio album in years.
Springsteen’s latest entry in such a storied catalog more than holds its own.
That split between the raw and the elaborate may well end up an outlier in the Boss’s discography as things move swiftly along to an impending full-band tour and subsequent album, but Western Stars sounds like a new chapter in a storied career, one in which Springsteen, no longer feeling pressured to play the Everyman, can embrace a wider range than ever before.
Western Stars is simply a classy record from a man growing increasingly comfortable with his status as an elder statesman of classic rock. And I absolutely cannot wait to listen to it in a car.
A lot of heart has gone into Western Stars, and so has a lot of effort. For someone like Springsteen, who has every reason to just kick back as the royalty checks fly in, to keep pushing on like this is quite admirable.
With a vocal sound richer and warmer—even friendlier—than it has been in the past, it appears as if the sun and the Western stars have indeed done Bruce some good.
'Western Stars' is a good album ... with more than the feeling of a great album lying dormant beneath too many production layers – a masterpiece desperately trying to get out from under all those pedal steel and syrupy string moments.
The arrangements roll and soar while leaving room for more intimate revelations, which is where Western Stars really finds its stride.
Springsteen, the man of all good numbers, I never understood before, but today I know it. There's more than a rock star face with low music. Here's a man with a style, a songwriter showing a creative process by his own, with control and purpose. Remember last single of John Mayer? "I'm a man serious after all" Well Springsteen is that man without a live message in Spotify.
When I was younger I really didn't like Bruce Springsteen's music... Maybe because I grew up in Jersey where the man is looked at as a musical god (My family lives in the same country as Bruce). When I was 18 I worked as a flower delivery boy and I actually used to regularly delivered flowers to his 'farm property'. I've met him a few times and he seems like a nice enough guy. As a kid I only knew of the songs my sister would play, so when I first heard 'Nebraska' as an adult my eyes were ... read more
Remove the horse then I would like the album cover a lot more. A placidly entertaining return from the legendary singer/songwriter that delves on the stories in between American back-roads with sweeping orchestration and sentimental eye to the distinctive vision of the record. It does just fine for the meanwhile.
2019 год имеет множество причин отметиться в музыкальной индустрии, но лично в моём сознании он отпечатался громаднейшим изобилием релизов от старой гвардии авторской песни. Причём не трафаретных кэшгрэбов, а альбомов со стопроцентно оригинальным контентом. Для Брюса ... read more
1 | Hitch Hikin' 3:37 | 74 |
2 | The Wayfarer 4:18 | 82 |
3 | Tucson Train 3:31 | 76 |
4 | Western Stars 4:41 | 82 |
5 | Sleepy Joe's Café 3:14 | 72 |
6 | Drive Fast (The Stuntman) 4:16 | 71 |
7 | Chasin' Wild Horses 5:03 | 75 |
8 | Sundown 3:17 | 74 |
9 | Somewhere North of Nashville 1:52 | 74 |
10 | Stones 4:44 | 66 |
11 | There Goes My Miracle 4:05 | 63 |
12 | Hello Sunshine 3:56 | 83 |
13 | Moonlight Motel 4:16 | 90 |
#3 | / | MOJO |
#4 | / | The Independent |
#7 | / | Uncut |
#7 | / | Yahoo Entertainment |
#8 | / | Albumism |
#9 | / | Classic Rock Magazine |
#10 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#13 | / | Slant Magazine |
#20 | / | Gothamist |
#22 | / | FLOOD |