Springsteen puts the turbo

Bruce Springsteen's soul album!

How the hell did it take so long?

And, above all, how to explain that it came out so fat and so exaggerated.

Provisionally, let's put the blame on Jon Landau.

Landau, you know, wrote in 1974 the immortal prediction: "I have seen the future of

and his name is Bruce Springsteen."

Soon, he was working as a producer, manager and educator of the New Jersey boy, whom he insisted on turning into the new John Ford.

Although his means of expression was another: the song cycle, colloquially known - to some of you it will sound - as "the LP" or "the album".

Before the decisive meeting, Landau was working as a record critic, a job so poorly paid that he was changing that job for that of a producer.

Curious: he worked with singer-songwriters (Livingston Taylor, James's cheerful brother) and some rock group (he briefly tamed the ferocious MC5);

however, he did not approach his favorite music—soul—except to write dithyrambs of Aretha, Otis, Sam & Dave, or Wilson Pickett.

There is an explanation for the fact that he took such precautions.

Soul production was, comparatively speaking, almost industrialized.

There were no big budgets: they worked with efficient studio musicians, generally based on works by professional composers, with very ductile vocalists and with fresh memories of their love adventures.

The result was concentrated and short songs (they rarely lasted three minutes), usually recorded in batches of two songs in a few hours, without the psychodramas of “I want to be an artist”.

The ratio of duration and intensity was unbeatable.

I imagine that Jon Landau would have remembered those lessons if he had had to sit behind the recording table to produce

, the soul album by Spingsteen.

But after undergoing brain surgery in 2011, Landau appears to have distanced himself from Bruce's day-to-day life.

Here he is listed as "executive producer", whatever you know what that implies.

In his place is Ron Aiello, an all-terrain producer who, as far as I know, had never recorded soul.

And it shows: the songs last a little longer than necessary, many arrangements lack finesse and the backup singers seem to charge for presence rather than inspiration.

But they are not fatal obstacles;

the main problem lies with the star.

Springsteen has cured his health explaining that, in the sixties, when he and his band performed in the clubs on the coast, they had to include soul yes or yes.

Sure, but playing for a tipsy audience to dance to is different from recording for the entire planet (according to Bruce, two-thirds of his

resides outside the United States; a good portion of his original audience has abandoned him because of his Democratic militancy).

So he has opted for the most obvious significator: a rough, smooth, stentorian voice, far removed from the subtleties of the best soul.

It's true that he controls himself when he doesn't shout (example:

, the Walker Brothers' baladon), but don't expect to find here the projection and, paradoxically, the emotional intimacy of albums like

.

Hey, it doesn't matter.

The incorporation of this repertoire, even in its present crude form, can even light up their concerts, if it means throwing the ballast of so many bloated songs from their recent times.

Drink to that.

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