Rage Against the Machine are probably best known here for the 2009 Facebook campaign to keep some X Factor mannequin from having a nice Christmas. But in 1992 the furious, politically charged LA band briefly gave rap-rock a good name. Their seething verses were matched by the guitar screeds of one Tom Morello, who could make his instrument sound like a DJ scratching vinyl while hiding a Harvard social studies degree in his back pocket.
Fast-forward two decades (and two missable incarnations: Audioslave and The Nighwatchman) and Morello is now in cahoots with Bruce Springsteen, who may have raged against a machine or two in his time. RATM covered The Ghost of Tom Joad, one of Springsteen's more haunting tracks; in 2008 Springsteen asked Morello to play it with his band, an act they have reprised live umpteen times since. Friendship blossomed.
Last spring, Morello replaced bandana-toting E Street guitarist Steve Van Zandt on the Australian leg of Springsteen's Wrecking Ball world tour. He ended up resetting the co-ordinates on the album of loose ends that Springsteen had been planning. Morello suggested revisiting High Hopes, previously covered by Springsteen. He dug out another tune Springsteen knew by the Saints, an Australian punk band.
From there, it was a natural rollick to a local studio to record those, plus the rebooted, electrified Ghost of Tom Joad with all 18 members of the 2013 touring E Street Band, plus Morello, in full effect. All in all, Morello plays some role on eight of the 12 High Hopes cuts, which span covers, re-recordings, vault numbers and previously unheard tracks. That's Morello, making "squeep" noises on the title track, previously an EP obscurity, now a major soul-rock workout about hope in hard times.
The keynote address here is clearly Tom Joad, no longer a ghost of a song, but a fully fleshed beast on which Springsteen and Morello swap both guitar parts and sung verses; Morello performs his vinyl-scratch party trick, which remains electrifying 20 years on. If live versions weren't legion on Youtube, this song would be worth the price of this scattershot, but gripping, record alone.
As it is, there are further appeals to Springsteen's fans' pockets. The Ghost of Tom Joad quotes Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath ("Whenever there's a cop beating a man…"). The police get it in the neck again on American Skin (41 Shots), a riposte to the police shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, revisited recently in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin. This time around, there's the expanded E Street Band, plus Morello on added textures.
Completists, meanwhile, will savour two offcuts from The Rising sessions (2002), which feature the late Clarence Clemons on sax and the late Danny Federici on organ. There is too, a proper recording of Springsteen's sombre Vietnam memorial The Wall, one of the most bitter songs in recent Springsteen memory.
The overall impression, however, is of a record playing with playfulness. Springsteen throws out curveballs, toys with gospel (Heaven's Wall) and Celtic forms (This Is Your Sword). The most audacious rethink by some measure, though, is the album's closing cover of Dream Baby Dream, which Springsteen has been playing live since Devils and Dust.
Penned by 70s nihilist synth-punk duo Suicide, Springsteen and co take the song's scrawny hopefulness and ratchet it up to hymnal E Street proportions – an act not unlike this record, which takes the idea of a stopgap album full of odds and ends and reimagines it as something much more satisfying.
