Bruce Springsteen Magic CD

Personnel: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitars, harmonica, pump organ, synthesizer, glockenspiel, percussion, background vocals); Stevie Van Zandt (guitars, mandolin, background vocals); Nils Lofgren (guitars, background vocals); Clarence Clemons (saxophone, background vocals); Roy Bittan (piano, organ); Danny Federici (organ, keyboards); Garry Tallent (bass guitar); Max Weinberg (drums); Patti Scialfa (background vocals).
Additional personnel: William Pu, Jay Christy, Sheela Lyengar, Kenn Wagner, Justin Bruns, Olga Shpitko, Soozie Tyrell, John Meisner, Christopher Pulgram (violin); Amy Chang, Tania Maxwell Clements, Lachlan McBane (viola); Karen Freer, Charae Kruege, Daniel Laufer (cello); Patrick Warren (tack piano, chamberlin); Jeremy Chatzky (upright bass).
Following up two folk-flavored albums, MAGIC finds Bruce Springsteen laying down his acoustic guitar to reclaim his rock-hero crown. He's assisted in this endeavor by producer Brendan O'Brien, best-known for big-time '90s hard rock, but the results have little in common with O'Brien's grungy past. Instead, MAGIC's sonic blueprint is more in line with Bruce's last stadium-rock statement, 2002's THE RISING. The album is front-loaded with hard-charging, heavy-riffing tunes ("Radio Nowhere," "You'll Be Comin' Down") that benefit from the sure-fire attack of the E Street Band. In fact, "Livin' in the Future" harks back to the band's vintage '70s work.
MAGIC isn't all back-to-basics rockers, though; evocative ballads that employ atmospheric string arrangements indicate that Springsteen is content neither with standing still nor with looking backwards. One of the most rewarding aspects of the album is the fact that after the relative tunelessness of 2005's DEVILS & DUST, Bruce seemingly learned from the folk gems he covered on his Pete Seeger homage a year later, and started writing arresting melodies again. Any way you look at it, those who may have been put off by Springsteen's previous stylistic diversions will have a welcome feeling for MAGIC.
Hailed as Bruce Springsteen's return to rock upon its release in fall 2007, Magic isn't quite as straightforward as that description would have it seem. True, this does mark another reunion with the E Street Band, only his second studio album with the group since 1984's Born in the U.S.A., giving this a rock & roll heft missing from his two previous albums -- the dusty, literary Devils & Dust and the raucous We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions -- and unlike The Rising, the first E Street Band album of the new millennium, there is no overarching theme here. It's just a collection of songs, something that Bruce hasn't done since Human Touch, or maybe even The River. All the ingredients are in place for a simple, straight-ahead rock album, except for two things: Springsteen didn't write a lot of flat-out rock songs, and with his producer Brendan O'Brien, he didn't make an album that sounds much like a rock & roll album, either. Magic is bright and punchy, a digital-age production through and through, right down to how each track feels as if it were crafted according to its own needs instead of the record as a whole.
Underneath this shiny veneer, the E Street Band can still lift this music toward great heights, infusing it with a sense of majesty, but this is an E Street Band that was recorded piecemeal in the studio, pasted together track by track as the group fit sessions into their busy schedules. This approach gives the album a bit of a mannered, meticulous sound not unlike The Rising, but such careful construction was appropriate for Springsteen's cautious, caring 9/11 rumination; on Magic it tends to keep the music from reaching full flight. Then again, the songs here don't quite lend themselves to either the transcendent sweep of Born to Run or the down-n-dirty roadhouse rockers that cluttered The River. There's a quiet melancholy underpinning this album. It's evident even on the hard-driving "Radio Nowhere,"Rolling Stone (p.119) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "Springsteen has rediscovered the boardwalk-dance-party power of BORN TO RUN and the Mitch Ryder and Jackie DeShannon encore covers in his 1975 and '78 shows."
Rolling Stone (p.108) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007" -- "These songs are Springsteen at his toughest and most focused..."
Spin (p.122) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "'Your Own Worst Enemy' and 'Girls in Their Summer Clothes' channel Brian Wilson, layering sleigh bells and swelling strings to craft experimental chamber pop."
Entertainment Weekly (pp.68-69) - "No album could say more about the uncertain national mood of 2007....Bruce Springsteen is back in the masterpiece business." -- Grade: A
Uncut (p.97) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[MAGIC] is BORN TO RUN crossed with TUNNEL OF LOVE, an attempt to recover the indomitable youthful fury of the former, astutely tempered by the older, wiser, sadder resignation of the latter."
No Depression (p.93) - "MAGIC may be the closest approximation to an old-school, big-noise Bruce album in ages."
Q (Magazine) (p.88) - Ranked #06 in Q's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2007" -- "At 58, The Boss has arrived at another peak."