Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen has always believed in the power of redemption, whether through love, or rock 'n' roll, or the resilient national spirit at the core of The Rising that helped the country rebound from the 2001 terrorist attacks. "Have a little faith," he urged, "there's magic in the night."

But with this Magic, his powerful, complex new album with the E Street Band, he's no longer sure.

Related Content

• SXSW: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band at ACL Live
  March 16, 2012
• Madonna releases "Girl Gone Wild," adds second St. Paul show
  February 27, 2012
• Clarence Clemons suffers stroke
  June 13, 2011
• Madonna's 2012 world tour hits St. Paul in November
  February 7, 2012
• The Kitten Covers meme is really hitting its stride
  November 21, 2011

More About

• Bruce Springsteen
• E Street Band
• Xcel Energy Center
• Max Weinberg
• Celebrity News

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

There's a striking dichotomy at work on Magic. On the one hand, Springsteen's music, and the Spectorish wall-of-sound production of Brendan O'Brien, revisits the classic, exuberant sound of Springsteen's early days: muscular hooks, swaggering sax swaths from Clarence Clemons, Roy Bittan's cascading piano runs, Danny Federici's billowing organ, Max Weinberg's thunderous drums, and a triple onslaught of slashing guitars.

On the other, Springsteen's lyrics probe the heart of nearly impenetrable darkness, which has moved in from the edge of town to become enveloping.

Even "Living in the Future," which sounds like a midsummer strut on the boardwalk with a palliative chorus of "don't worry, Darlin'," takes place under "Skies gunpowder...a dirty sun," and is riddled with a sense of decay. Even a kiss is marred by a "taste of blood on your tongue."

The sorcery in question throughout Magic, though not named specifically, is the evil alchemy of lies, betrayal, corruption, and twisted realities concocted by the Cheney-Bush cabal. "There's bodies hangin' in the trees/This is what will be," Springsteen soberly intones at the end of the chilling title track. What follows is the fiercest rocker on the album, "Last to Die," based on John Kerry's famous quote about Vietnam: "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" Now applied to Iraq, it's protest song as fist-waving anthem, no longer stoked by youthful ambition but by anger, disillusionment, and frustration.

Springsteen's always been adept at mingling yearnings for personal fulfillment with socio-political points. The "runaway American dream" of "Born to Run" wasn't a casually tossed-off line. But on Magic, he's outdone himself, with every song summing up the prevailing apocalyptic miasma sucking the soul out of a fractured nation, thanks to this Voldemortian White House. As Springsteen wrote in another context: "Blame it on the lies that killed us/Blame it on the truth that ran us down."

Bruce Springsteen

Magic

Columbia

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN performs FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, at the XCEL ENERGY CENTER; 651.989.5151