It is not at all easy to cope with a rock star who suddenly happens to be singing ancient folk songs accompanied by a loud mix of violins, horns, harmonicas, banjos etc. But on the Seeger Sessions to be released on April 25 almost everything seems to turn out successfully for Bruce Springsteen.
The new album stands out as a great piece of musical historiography but also as a biting and topical contribution to the political mobilisation takíng place on the American left wing today. The songs appear to be very serious and sometimes explicitly religious but never the less the music is filled with at rhythmical devilishness that makes it all rock, roll and ramble in a nearly ridiculously energetic manner. The inspiration from folk music has often led Springsteen into a static and melancholy minimalism but in the company of the enormous Seeger Sessions Band you will have to search really hard for the dead spot. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions contains no decided rock songs but never the less the question arises when Springsteen's mighty potential as a rock singer has last been exploited so well.
This is particularly evident on John Henry - a song whose historical background was a duel with hammers that took place in the 1880s between a worker called John Henry and a machine developed to take over his job. It may be true that the orchestra is here something completely different from the E Street Band - but for all practical purposes the effect is the same and Springsteen lets out all his vocal mobility and brutality with a marvellous ease. Something similar takes place on Mrs. McGrath.
*(To be continued as it is translated from Danish)