Western Stars

promotional photo for Western Stars. Bruce and the El Camino.

"Maps don't do much for me, friend. I follow the weather and the wind."

An album of new Bruce Springsteen music is basically Flag Day. Tomorrow, June 14th, is Flag Day. "Western Stars" is coming out.

Western Stars is a set of contemplative vignettes, set out on open roads and empty plains. The characters are aging actors, stunt men, men young and old. They don't talk a whole lot about what they do or how much money they (maybe don't) have, where they're going or why, or where they've been, except sometimes in dark hints. There's a kid wonderstruck by the bigness of his world, the old actor, the failed songwriter, and a lot of loneliness. There are also references to other songs, both Bruce's and others, more than I can count, and yet it's new.

The album opens with "Hitch Hikin'." This feels instantly like it's hooking in to the Woody Guthrie songbook, the beginning of the songbook when young Woody borrowed a song made popular by the Carter Family, rewrote the lyrics and came up with "I Ain't Got No Home (in this World Anymore)." Guthrie's character is roaming because he has to: "I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round, Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town." Bruce's? Because he wants to: "I'm a rolling stone just rolling on, Catch me now 'cause tomorrow I'll be gone" (a lyric that trends close to Bruce's own "Lucky Man," a b-side from the late 1980's). I imagine the singer of the song to be a kid getting lifts from older people. So while Guthrie sang, "This world is such a great and a funny place to be" because "the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor," this singer sees a world that is a great and fun place to be, because... it's a great and fun place to be: "I'm ridin' high on top of the world." I imagine the singer of the song to be a kid getting lifts from older people, Then, just when I'm convinced that "Hitch Hikin'" has left Guthrie behind, the singer intones, "Telephone poles and trees go whizzin' by," a nearly direct lift from Woody's "Car Song." That Bruce covered both of those Guthrie songs is may be just coincidence, after all. Or not. Maybe not. Probably not.

"Wayfarer" continues the traveling theme. More adult, more playful: "Same old cliché, a wanderer on his way, slippin' from town to town." At least, more playful until the admission that the singer is the cliché: "Then rain comes fallin', the blues come calling, and you're left with a heart of stone," and, calling out to the former love who was left behind: "Where are you now." It's among many recurring themes over the course of the record. In "Tucson Train," the narrator and his baby "fought hard over nothin'," and when he won, he won... nothin', and "carried that nothin' for a long time." Now, she's coming to him (maybe... maybe not... probably not) on the 5:15.
Springsteen has routinely referenced Viagra as part of his on-stage shtick in recent years. In the title track to "Western Stars," he finally goes there in the lyrics: "On the set, the makeup girl brings me Two raw eggs and a shot of gin. Then I give it all up for that little blue pill That promises to bring it all back to you again." That is what makes sure that "tonight the western stars are shining bright again." The John Wayne reference toward the end of the song reminds me of another song that Bruce covered, Warren Zevon's "My Ride's Here": "Set me up and I'll tell it for you, friend."

The songs don't all work for me. "Sleepy Joe's Café," set in maybe 1970 at a roadside greasy spoon in California, does nothing for me, except as some sort of cross between Bruce's "Out in the Street" and some early Billy Joel songs that I can't quite name. "Drive Fast (The Stuntman)" is a bit too close to too many Springsteen songs that have preceded it (e.g., "The Wrestler," "The Hitter"). In "Chasin' Wild Horses," the song hints that the singer did something awful: "Guess it was somethin' I shouldn't have done Guess I regret it now." But we never find out what it was. Maybe he killed the person in the song? It's between the singer and whoever he's singing to. I'm just not sure if I care.

Throughout "Western Stars," Bruce's voice is out front. There won't be many problems making out the lyrics. Far from the densely layered feel of so many of his earlier rock records, "Western Stars" feels open, expansive. In "Somewhere North of Nashville," when he sings, "I'm out on this highway With a bone-cold chill," the feeling of the empty road is right there. That song also contains one of the albums best self-referential zingers: "For the deal I made, the price was strong I traded you for this song." It's a cheaper price than that legendarily paid by Robert Johnson, but it doesn't work out.

"Stones," like "Western Stars," starts off with the character waking up, only here with stones in his mouth. The melody took me a long time to place... until finally I heard U2's "Mothers of the Disappeared." It's only the first couple lines of the song, and I'm sure it's just a coincidence. To the best of my knowledge, Bruce hasn't covered that one.

"There Goes My Miracle" asks a companion question to "Wayfarer": "Look what you've done." But, as the music swells, we realize that it's the singer who has been left behind as his love has slipped away forever.

"Hello Sunshine," perhaps the most perfect California pop song of the album, has Bruce singing that "you can get a little too fond of the blues" to a melody that is decidedly not blues.

"Moonlight Motel," a remembrance to days gone by, sung to a person who's not there about a place that's "boarded up and gone like an old summer song," seems the gently perfect way to wrap it up. There's even a dusty screen door, just as if the joint is sitting out on Thunder Road, and fittingly its melody reminds of Bruce's old track "When You're Alone." The boundless world that once opened up to a child, has been reduced to a habitual parking spot. But life, some form of it anyway, goes on. One last shot before hitting the open road.