Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: a memorable rock letter worthy of its legend

Bruce Springsteen on 'Letter to You'.

In a world turned upside down by the great pandemic and where the past seems more distant than ever, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band bring back memories of the best

on their new album.

More than an album, or a great album,

, which is published on October 23, is, as its name suggests, an open heart letter to all those who once vibrated with music that crossed contemporary history because an uncle named Elvis began to sing imitating everyone Those black people he used to hear on the radio and then, as if by magic, an endless legion of madmen followed him to this day.

Or because one of those crazy people named Bruce, accompanied by his inseparable band, gave more free rein to that music and became one of the greats with his people.

Why

it is, above all, the great card for all those who once enjoyed the legend of Springsteen and the E Street Band.

A letter written, true, by a guy who is over 70 years old and who, despite all the artistic swings of past years, the weight of fame and the passage of time, still has the strength, talent and vision to make us feel music like it was the first time.

As if it were the first time ... and after a long time of crossing in the desert.

You have to go far back to find such a compact, organic and exciting record in Springsteen's career.

A global rock icon, an artist admired by all generations and the authoritative voice of the best American music of all time, the New Jersey songwriter and singer had been trying to fit his own mold of legend throughout the 21st century.

Not that he made bad records, that he did, or at least could have saved them as

;

nor did he have any excess style exercises, which he did, such as the successful

and the less successful

(despite having the devastating

)

nor that he found no reasons to compose, which he had, like 9/11 in the applauded

, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the interesting

, the search for national identity in the remarkable

, the political change in The US in the irregular

and the economic crisis in the not inconsiderable

.

It was not that.

Since they weren't his live shows, they were always at an above-average level, with sublime moments when he forgot to play the role of rocker for the whole family.

It was none of those things because Bruce never stopped searching, in his own way and with the complacency of stardom, but searching.

It was a decisive sound, a mark that, more than recognizable, which was in someone of his charisma and quality, was an imperishable seal.

The same label that catapulted him to glory when rock and roll

It was a wild thing, full of truth, something that we were told as children to come true on an album.

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Bruce Springsteen, the same guy who wanted to be the perfect cross between Dylan and Elvis to end up becoming an inspiration to hundreds of young people, has come up with that sound.

Again.

Like the first time.

Like when the E Street Band covered their best adventures in the front line, making him feel like one of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

One of a great band.

As we reminded him, or wanted to remind him, those of us who never settle for the slogan of his last name or the exercises of easy nostalgia.

Yes, Bruce and the E Street Band are back.

Maybe they never left, in view of so many great concerts in so many years, but they are back because Bruce himself has said so, willingly or not, a few days after the release of

.

"We return to the sensitivity of the band" and this new album is "an album with everyone playing at the same time," as he commented on

, in the only interview granted to date for this work.

On a snowy day in November last year, Bruce gathered the group together in his stable in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and put it in to record.

They reserved five days for the sessions, but they had one left.

They recorded

in four intensive days, a rhythm that guitarist Steve Van Zandt has compared to those early, instinctively magical Beatles sessions.

Arrive, get together, play, taste, let the music flow, get everyone into the song and record the moment.

One of those old jazz and old rock and roll things.

One of the obsessions of Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

A piece of advice pianist Roy Bittan gave Bruce, asking him to forget about the

and all those tracks that always spin in his head.

And a way of facing Van Zandt's own music,

, second lieutenant always in the shadows, author of outstanding and recent works with this flow as

and captain of this album in his own right, who has pointed out, with his usual pirate smile , that Bruce "has taken 37 years to return."

Thirty-seven years, four decades, or whatever, but in the end, it turned out that Springsteen, so preoccupied with looking outside, had to look inside.

It was enough to look around him, his own.

Listen to those who raised him to the top.

It's not that he didn't do it before, but, once again, it should be said: the difference between this Bruce and all the others since the late nineties is that he has wanted to be nothing more than the boy who started in a band.

Not the rescuer of the attacks, not the political spokesman, not the voice of America, not the puppet of his own fame.

In his talk with

he stops to recount his friendship with George Theiss, recently deceased and original member of The Castiles, one of Bruce's first groups in the early seventies before joining the future E Street Shuffle, at the E Street Band dessert.

And it serves to understand to what extent his past should be heard.

If she was with him, like those bits of memory that she speaks of in her autobiography to explain her belonging to the land of Jersey, it was never to whisper truths into his ear.

It was to measure himself.

But Bruce, in view of this album, it seems that he has stopped measuring himself.

He has just (finally!) Really gotten into recording, of all, with "the biggest bar band in the world", as he described it in

.

The World's Greatest Bar Band and Bruce Springsteen sound urgent, with poignant drama.

is a work with a great sense of band.

Coupled together like a roller, they've all achieved what was once just sparkles on records: an updated E Street Band sound.

A vitalist sound, with a very personal echo, recalling old times, but without falling into repetitions.

Nothing changes, perhaps, but it is now more than ever an achievement.

A necessary energy vibrates, nothing imposed and of forceful punch.

It is less youthful and innocent than it was in the seventies and early eighties, but it is just as emotional.

Bruce sings in a raspier voice and the E Street Band covers him with backdrops of galloping horses.

The Phil Spector sparkles, so popular with Springsteen, are not suits that, as on other occasions, end up looking obvious and

, but cover the whole in one piece, with force.

Everything that has been perceived in them for decades ends up imposing itself as if it were the only truth on earth.

"The big black train coming down the track / He blows his long and long whistle / One minute, you're here ... / I'm coming home", sings Bruce in 'One Minute You're Here', the beautiful halftime that he opens the album in a confessional tone, reminiscent of Townes Van Zandt, and almost picking up where he left off at

the last of

.

With

Bruce has returned home.

For this, not only does he repeat this verse in more than one song, but he has written a letter before with all his traces.

The title track of the album and the second of it may be the weakest of all because it looks too much like tics from the recent past, but, from there, nothing disappoints.

The whole sounds as dramatic as it is melancholic.

There is a flavor of survival won, like those antiheroes who take refuge in coffee shops or second-rate trains, like the one that seems on fire with that unstoppable rhythm in

.

It holds a grim epic that might well be signed today by talented disciples like War on Drugs or Arcade Fire.

Like

bleak and fierce tone

it could well slip into an

electric

.

It would not clash with the

electrified

of their concerts.

,

(Jake Clemons' sax is impossible to differentiate from that of his uncle Clarence),

(with that spiritual world built with music) ... they all have that spirit of a seeker of holy grails.

An indomitable spirit in Bruce's best songbook with the E Street Band.

He also glides on

, which sounds like a premonition when ghosts lurk throughout the record.

Ghosts like those of those saxes gleaming between organ cushions, and keys plucking between winds and strings assembled as a positive whole.

Ghosts like those key pieces that were the saxophonist Clarence Clemons and the organist Danny Federici, both deceased and that in this work are perfectly supplied by Jake Clemons and Charlie Giordano respectively.

Specters of an E Street Band also recovering all its glory.

A band wanting to make sense of the last round.

A set that revives in three great compositions rescued from the early seventies by Springsteen:

,

and

.

“I rescued them because I wanted to sing with an adult voice the ideas of youth.

Something a little crazy ”, confessed Bruce in

.

Three jewels restyled for the occasion and taking on all the meaning with their Dylanian verbiage, with the stratospheric verve of the E Street Band, of their know-how, of understanding rock and roll as a beginning and an end.

His horizon would fit into that memorable second album by

.

Or in another

possible

.

But they are here, in

a work that, it is no longer that it is their best album in the 21st century or since

or those 37 years that Little Steven said, it is that it is comparable to all his glorious past, that al who always comes to reproach him for how far he had been from everything he gave us, taught us and enlightened us.

That rock and roll crusader has an amazing redemption here.

is all that can be asked at this point of someone who defined our coordinates as the one who has the most.

A letter for you.

For us.

There is something absolutely devastating when Bruce has been seen in the videos of the confinement with the most elderly face and on the threshold of old age and this album sounds young.

When from almost every angle of the album a disconcerting sense of purpose is projected and almost sounds like a farewell to

, a closing that, after the tender, faithful and infallible accompaniment of the E Street Band, fades with Bruce's voice in the foreground singing: "I'll see you in my dreams."

The dreams that bring back memories of the best rock and roll.

Bruce affirmed in

that a beautiful part of life is what the dead leave us.

There is another better one, although, sometimes, we no longer manage to trust it: the last breath of the living.

It allows us to walk away in peace until the end of time, and beyond.

proves it.