Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars + Songs From The Film
Columbia – 25 October 2019
Just four months after releasing the studio version of Western Stars, now comes the soundtrack to the cinematic film version recorded live in Bruces own nearly 100-year-old barn and interspersed with assorted footage of horses running free or Bruce driving a pickup, vintage film of him and Patty Scialfa and the like. It’s the same songs, performed in the same order, but this time with a 30-piece orchestra, full band and assorted backing singers, among them Scialfa who also plays guitar and was responsible for the vocal arrangements.
As such these are augmented rather than reworked versions, fleshed out from the studio takes but not offering any new insights or dimensions other than the scope, the short space between the two records not affording time for any reflection on the material, such as, for example his reconstruction of Born In The USA. Unlike the energy or the vocal inflections brought to the stage on the E Street Band live recordings, these concert versions don’t deviate from the originals (though the skittering drums at the start of Hello Suisnhine are less pronounced and the addition of Scialfa’s harmonies makes Moonlight Motel arguably slightly more wistful) and are basically just more lush, neither better nor worse, just live and, in most cases, slightly longer, Stones by almost a minute.
This isn’t a criticism, simply an observation and if you swooned over the studio recordings, then you’re going to feel much the same way with these, the bonus being that it ends with a new addition, a faithful cover of Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, a song dating from the same year as Springsteen’s breakthrough album, Born To Run.
A complement to the studio album rather than a reinterpretation, which I suspect will better stand repeated plays in the years to come, nonetheless, it is, after all, a Springsteen live album and that will be as a good a reason as any to add to the collection.
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