[rayword45]

Day 11: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle by Bruce Springsteen (Album Choice: Gus V)

Well, I see not much that strikes me as Patriotic through this list. Springsteen is the closest to something "All-American" on that list.

I've never even listened to a single Springsteen song. Rolling Stone jerks off about him so much that I decided the smart thing to do would be stay the hell away. But now I'm listening, because it's the most American album on the spreadsheet. Let's do this, and see what I think of Rolling Stone after this.

...Okay, what the fuck is this? I expected something in the vein of Dylan-esque folk rock, not this funk-jazz mishmash. This sounds more like Phish than anything... Seriously, what?

After that baffling first track, he seems to be getting more into the Americana/folk rock sound I expected haha nope no he threw in accordions and more jazz horns. This album is overproduced to all hell. For an album that's supposed to be about working class America, lyrics about working class America should not be matched with lavish production with assloads of instruments and syrupy backup vocals. It's not particularly grating or anything, it just doesn't feel sincere. I will say that it does keep things eclectic. We have the jamrocky E Street Shuffle, funky Kitty's Back, exercise in country mediocrity Wild Billy's Circus Story, and the best track Incident on 57th Street which is basically a keyboard-driven ballad. And if any of these sound appealing to you, good news! They're all dragged out to about 5 million years! No seriously, there is no reason that the median track length here is 7 minutes. This very well could've been a more stripped down EP. Or short album. I mean, in the early 60s I'm pretty sure the average album was like 25 minutes. Nowadays the average album is around 70 minutes (with a usual 66 minutes of filler bullcrap). Doing the math, the average 1973 album should've been only been around 36 minutes, right? What's that you say? My math is bullshit? Well screw you! I'm right and you're wrong.

You know, I've been pretty hard on this album. And that's not fair, I have two admitted biases.

1. I expected greatness and was disappointed when I was not met with it, because... I dunno.
2. I don't like Rolling Stone and they wank over this guy every time there's a new album.

Ignoring that, this album is BOMBASTIC AS HELL. And unlike Queen it doesn't make me want to kick some ass with its pomp. It's not really a bad album, and I can see that Bruce is a pretty good songwriter... But yeah this is not my cup of cheese. People say his other works are different, maybe I'll check them out sometime in the next decade.

Best Track: Incident on 57th Street
Rating: 5/10