Lucky Town - Springsteen, Bruce (CD 1992)

It's fascinating to think that the last Bruce Springsteen album I reviewed in this series, Human Touch, was released on the same day as Lucky Town. In my review of that album, linked above for posterity, reference, and a few superfluous hits, I touted Human Touch as Bruce Springsteen's Worst Album; that's not exactly a revelation, considering that it is, literally, impossible not to share that opinion with me. The funny thing is that, without Human Touch - an overlong, lugubrious, depressing chore of an album - Lucky Town would be considered the Worst Springsteen Album. It's not *bad* - not all that good either, of course - but it is of significantly inferior quality to pretty much every other Bruce Springsteen album.

But Human Touch does exist, much as many of us Broooooce fans wish it didn't, and as such, history has been a little kinder to Lucky Town, by virtue of the school of thought that says, "hey, remember those two albums Bruce Springsteen released at the same time? remember how one of them *really* sucked?" Lucky Town does have a few things going for it, though, and that's why I'm gonna give you the go-ahead if you stumble across it for the price of a couple of crumpled bills and mild loss of dignity in some seedy record store's bargain bin.

One thing you must know about this album: by anyone's standards, Lucky Town is a pretty upbeat listen, but when stacked next to Human Touch, it's a damn-near orgiastic celebration of life and music. Stacked next to The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, of course, it's slow and overly calculated. Judged on its own standards, Lucky Town is deeply and profoundly okay.

A second thing you must know: to anyone familiar with the Bruce Springsteen songs that most people actually *care* about - that is, those recorded with the E Street Band, easily the finest and most versatile rock and roll outfit of its generation, those recordings lended ample weight and urgency by their players' considerable interpretive prowess - Lucky Town will be a profoundly different listen, because its optimism is sacrificed by a band of unhurried studio players that, honestly, don't appear to give a damn about interpreting the songs. Maybe that's because it's not the best batch of tunes in Springsteen's singular ouvre - but it's certainly not the worst, either, so it's hard to comprehend what could account for this.

The album starts strongly enough. "Better Days" kicks open Lucky Town with an absolute bang - it's one of, oh, maybe two truly great songs penned for this album, and it's an absolute howl to the heavens, like throwing one's head up into a downpour and dancing. It's like that one terrific image from "The Shawshank Redemption". The title track is a minor-key rocker that would have benefitted from some serious E Street action, but manages to acquit itself pretty adequately on the strength of an oddly sinister chorus that implies a little more decay than the surface would like to let on - as though, whether said "lucky town" is metaphorical or literal (Atlantic City, perhaps?), it's not as lucky as you're gonna want to believe. Later on, Springsteen extols one of the purest, most unaffected portraits of romantic love in "If I Should Fall Behind", a song that seemed destined (if not realistically fated) to soundtrack a billion weddings. (The definitive version of this song, of course, is the live version at the end of the Live in New York City album and DVD releases from the early 2000s; when the music is reduced to a sole, clean, electric guitar, the tempo slows to an ethereal crawl, and the entire band sings as if to dedicate themselves to each other, the beauty and emotion inherent in this song slips to the forefront.)

Elsewhere, Mr. Boss impresses only sporadically. On "The Big Muddy", for example, he breaks out a fantastic gruff tenor, pushes it to the tippy-top of his vocal range, sounding as though he's been gargling with nicotine; "Book of Dreams" sounds pretty, as though it should be the twenty-years-on successor to Wild and Innocent's beautiful "Sandy", but seems to lack something in spirit and intstrumentation. And from then on, Lucky Town strays off like an ADD kid, unaware he's supposed to be making music.

Of course, this all stems from the idea that we hold an established artists' work up to previous accomplishments; which may be unfair, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn't even *own* Human Touch or Lucky Town if I weren't a borderline obsessive Springsteen fan. Still, you can't ignore Springsteen's newfound lyrical economy: he's even more streamlined than on Born in the U.S.A., which was a significant lyrical stepdown (quantitatively) from the wordsmithery found on Greetings From Asbury Park and Wild and Innocent. "Local Hero", "Leap of Faith", and "Living Proof" all sound like they *should* be exceptional songs, except after a while their economical standards cause them to derail, because a handful of chords and a series of clunky, repetitive choruses get older a lot quicker than seven-minute songs that evolve, that tell a story. Not to mention, Springsteen's stalwart refusal to deviate from a single sound here results in a lot of homogeny, admirably only in that the songs don't last as long as they do on Human Touch.

All told, Lucky Town isn't *that* bad of an album. It's certainly more spirited than its dreadful fraternal twin brother; still, all told, the only reason Lucky Town isn't a blight on Springsteen's resume is because the requisite blight is, in fact, Human Touch. Lucky Town ultimately banks on a few good tunes and says to hell with all the rest. It gets a higher rating than Human Touch for me because, well, Human Touch blows hard. But, truth be told, Bruce did better before Lucky Town, and he would go on to do much better. As I ended my review of that last album: at least it's only uphill from here.

**

GROWIN' UP SPRINGSTEEN REVIEWS:
- Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ
- The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle
- Born To Run
- Darkness on the Edge of Town
- The River
- Nebraska
- Born in the U.S.A.
- Tunnel of Love
- Human Touch
- Lucky Town