Oddly enough, some of my own favourite Springsteen albums are ones which hardly anyone else ranks as being his best - Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils and Dust, Tunnel of Love - but really most of them are pretty much flawless, but The Rising and the first 'Greetings' album are the ones I think I'd miss the most if I was suddenly struck deaf! - especially the poetry he wrote in those early albums songs has never been bettered, and then The Rising is just an incredibly moving album with all it's meditations of the aftermath of 9/11.
I'd actually really love to see Bruce produce another folksy/acoustic Nebraska/Tom Joad/Devils and Dusty type record, just him and his guitar kicking back and telling us stories, which he doesn't really do anymore apart from the odd track once in a while, but I don't know if that will ever happen.
I'm a bit worried though that he maybe doesn't have another gold-plated classic in him, 2 of the last 3 have (in my view at least) been Godawful - Working on a Dream was a total disaster and I long ago decided that life is just too short to waste 50 minutes of it playing that album ever again, the beautiful The Last Carnival is the only track from that album that I even like, and the High Hopes album wasn't much better and it sounds exactly like what it really is - a bunch of old cobbled together out-takes and cover-versions and stuff he left unfinished and that he originally ditched as they presumably weren't considered to be good enough to make it onto record, and if I never have to hear Tom Morello's tedious 'wah-wah pedal' guitar on a Springsteen song, it will still be too soon...and a few of the tracks he didn't even write....except the Seeger Sessions thing, I don't think there was a single cover version on any original studio album of his for nearly 40 years, and then he suddenly records 3 of them, and not even decent songs.
And yet I really liked the American Beauty EP which came after High Hopes, and was taken from the same sessions, so I can't explain that!
But I have great faith that he will get back to what he does best, but I do think his next album will be crucial, and it needs to be a total triumph, for me he's making too many records that equally divide opinion between people who either love them, or hate them, which never used to be the case when everyone agreed he's a frigging genius! (which he still is IMO, but you get my point!)
