Bruce Springsteen's 18th studio album could hardly form a starker contrast to its immediate predecessor. Where 2012's Wrecking Ball was a finely focused howl of rage at the bankers behind the global financial crisis, High Hopes is a loose ragbag of curios, covers and reworked old material.
Springsteen recorded it on the road, which means that this uncharacteristically scattergun material is lent cohesion by an E Street Band bang on top of their game. Springsteen cherrypicks from his back catalogue judiciously, with standouts including American Skin (41 Shots), originally written in reaction to the 1999 NYPD shooting of Amadou Diallo and now rededicated to Trayvon Martin.
The blowsy Harry's Place failed to make the cut for 2002's post-9/11 album The Rising, its depiction of a sleazy NY demi-monde presumably deemed inappropriate for a city in mourning, while a full-throated duet with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello on The Ghost of Tom Joad burns with righteous rage. Springsteen's perennially yearning vocal even lends a human touch to Suicide's minimal-is-maximal drone anthem Dream Baby Dream. High Hopes may be a stopgap, but it is one assembled with tender, loving care.
