Finally broke down and got Magic from iTunes last week, with five or so solid listens since. Bruce’s latest isn’t the immediate grabber, at least for me, that The Rising was nor is it a hard rock record in the style of, say, Born to Run, Darkness or Born in the USA, and impression you have gotten from reading the rock critics’ pontifications.
Magic is a good record and it does rock but the connection I’d make is to the more R&B style of his first two albums and the retro ’60s sound spread among The River‘s two discs, updated for the time passed. Lyrically Bruce is continuing with his exploration of a political voice, most explicitly in Livin’ in the Future, Last to Die and Long Walk Home but most of the remaining have subtle messages if read in this light.
Radio Nowhere, track one and the first single, is a bit deceptive in that sense, being the closest musically to The Rising; lyrically I still think its too close to 57 Channels and Elvis Costello’s Radio, Radio, and a whole host of other songs over the years from artists who don’t hear their own product often enough on mass media outlets.
Most of the remaining tracks struck me as Bruce mining the big studio sound of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson (Your Own Worst Enemy, Girls in Their Summer Clothes), with a definite influence from his recent folkie work (e.g., Gypsy Biker, Magic, Devil’s Arcade). I’ll Work for Your Love and Long Walk Home are outliers, the former a straight ahead pop rocker that could easily be mistaken for one of the tunes on Disc 3 of Tracks and the latter almost veering, in a good way, into Neil Young/Pearl Jam musical territory.
Overall I slotted Magic in eleventh in the Rating Bruce Records table, just behind Tracks and Live 1975-1985 and ahead of Nebraska and The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.
Bonus Humor
Jon Stewart does an adoring fan bit the night after seeing the E Streeters at Madison Square Garden earlier this year:
BillSaysThis 