Brooooce. Photo by Mark Seliger.
By Todd Lavoie
They’re back! Well, almost. This coming Tuesday, Oct. 2, to keep things official and all. That’s when the Magic happens.
Proving that patience really does pay off from time to time, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are about to reward us rather handsomely for riding out their extended hiatus. Their latest Columbia Records thunderer Magic hits the racks, and if the glowing adjectives tossed around by the press are any indication, the phrase “return to form” is written all over it. Sure, I could’ve already checked for myself, maybe even previewed a couple of songs – thanks to this handy-dandy Internet thing all the kids are raving about – but I really do relish the freshness of a CD when it’s been shucked from its shrink-wrap within hours of its release into the world. There’s nothing quite like it, is there? In an age where everything seems to be so readily available and spoilers are just a click away, I’d rather keep it old-school, thank you all the same. And so I’ll wait till Tuesday to find out for myself. Besides: why would I want to get rid of the one single interesting feature Tuesdays have to offer?
“But it’s Bruce Springsteen – big deal!” Yes, I can already hear them, snipping and quipping away up there on the horizon, a veritable sea of ironic haircuts and tight-legged trousers poo-pooing away my excitement over what promises to be a highlight of this already-impressive fall music season. Maybe it’s because the Boss reminds the Vice Generation too much of Dad or Uncle Joe?
Furthermore, I doubt Springsteen possesses a single ironic bone in his body; there’s no cheeky winks or clever-for-clever’s sake at play here. He’s far too straight-up for that, thankfully, but such directness might come across as so unfashionably retro in or post-everything culture. It’s probably only a partial explanation, and I could even counter my own argument by pointing out the wonderfully refreshing arrival of what I’ve taken to calling the current sincerity movement in indie rock: witness the impact of emotionally-direct, irony-free acts such as Antony and the Johnsons, Joan as Policewoman, and perhaps even Broken Social Scene.