He returned to work with his E Street Band, which he temporarily interrupted at last year’s Western Stars. The album was a stylistic tour of the American prairie and other regions filled with tasteful orchestral songs, Letter To You is a return to purebred rock.
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He recorded his twentieth studio album with the band in his studio in New Jersey. It only took them five days, no studio editing of the recordings, and most of the dozen songs on the album were written by The Boss, as Springsteen is nicknamed on the music scene, in ten days. It brings nine fresh songs and new recordings of three older, written and not yet released in the seventies, namely Janey Needs A Shooter, If I Was the Priest and Song for Orphans.
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White cover
Foto: Sony Music
The age difference between the songs is not noticeable on the album. After all, they were all recorded now and they are sure of the natural playing and arranging skills of the protagonist and the members of his band.
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Springsteen created a record about reconciliation, transience, departure, farewell, in the introductory acoustic ballad One Minute You’re Here also about life on the road from city to city. Many songs are reminiscent of what he has created in the past. In some, he closed himself in a circle of melodies and did not intend to disturb or leave it (House of a Thousand Guitars, Song for Orphans).
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Such, however, is his authorial and, after all, interpretive speech. It also includes the band’s raw play, tastefully complemented by the sound of the wind accordion, which accentuates a noticeable country influence in the songs, or the piano, which softens them again.
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Springsteen is interesting both in purely rock songs (Burnin ‘Train, Ghosts) and in the calm and urgent House of A Thousands Guitar, Song for Orphans or If I Was The Priest, Rainmaker-motivated Southern rock and the more pop The Power of Prayer.
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In the context of his work and traditional rock customs, everything is fine, although it seems that he does not come up with anything even a little different. Almost every song on the record has such a character that the listener is looking forward to her concert performance, because he knows that this is it, that it is Springsteen’s honest and emotional.
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| Bruce Springsteen: Letter To You |
| Sony Music, 58:17 |
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