Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It doesn’t matter how late in life you come to some musicians or artists, they will wait for you to catch up to them. They will continue to perform and make music knowing full well that at some point even the most ardent non-believer will find that they have been wrong all the time, come along with flat hat tightly wound around their fists and apologising for taking so long for getting on board with their best laid plans.
There can’t be that many people who take music seriously or even with a note of slight brevity, something to dip into in between other things, that doesn’t own at least one Bruce Springsteen album, the man certainly has the back catalogue that would make a young fan weep with the thought of the expense they are about to endure in owning them all to listen to. Now, right on cue, Bruce Springsteen releases a new album in which to add to that young fan’s collection, to make the ones who have been with him on his long and incredible journey all their lives smile with satisfaction of the pilgrimage they are about to undertake and for the late and almost undeserving latest fan, revel in the thought of how can they have been so stupid not to get it in the first place.
High Hopes indeed, a collection of new tracks in which to bask in the light of someone who perhaps symbolises real America in the latter half of the 20th Century and early 21st, a cover of high quality and a couple of tracks which have been played live but never captured fully in the studio till now. High Hopes is not just a latest album; it is a reminder that somewhere out there is the dream that never truly died.
With a couple of notable and understandable exceptions, this is Bruce Springsteen and his fellow unique musicians giving a rousing appeal to remember that dream and in songs such as the brutally good Harry’s Place, the destructive force of the fantastic American Skin (41 Shots), the tremendous cover of the album title track, a song by the Havalinas, and the simplicity of Frankie Fell In Love, the dream, a real vision of what can be spoken of and not brushed under a carpet by the unfeeling members of humanity and somewhere, somehow a flag that has been lowered for too long can be seen starting to rise once more, a flag of decency in a world otherwise permeated by the self-serving and greedy.
Whether this is your first album, or indeed you own every single one of Bruce Springsteen’s recordings, High Hopes is an album in which the pilgrimage to redemption is well worth taking.
Ian D. Hall