Bruce Springsteen - Letter to You (October 23, 2020) Album • Page 5

The best early birthday present anyone could have asked for. Thank you, Bruce, for continuing to provide us with so much amazing music.

 

I was talking last week with a friend of mine who has been a fan for decades, and this has always been his biggest critique of Bruce. Thinking about what some of those albums might have been with the band is crazy. I think Lucky Town would have been a classic.

 

Speaking of "Rainmaker", can we talk real quick about how Bruce still has empathy for Trump voters that I lost like 3 full years ago?

 

It was randomly like 75 and slightly stormy in Michigan today. It’s been perfect for this album.

 

Yeah, it’s 30 degrees colder in my part of the state. Also stormy though.

 

I will say there are albums that needed to be done without the full E Street. Devils and Dust, Western Stars, Wrecking Ball, etc. But generally yeah

 

i thought Wrecking Ball was an E Street album?

 

It is, but it doesn’t sound like an E Street album like this one. Which I think is part of the point. He uses these guys a lot, but hasn’t let them just sound like E Street often

 

Contrary to popular belief, Wrecking Ball is actually not an E Street album. A lot of the guys don’t play on it at all, and the ones who do I think are only on a couple tracks. I think it gets retconned as an E Street album because he effectively toured it as one.

 

It also has the last recordings of Clarence, so I mostly count it. Plus it has Max, Soozie and Steve

 

Yeah I also legitimately though Wrecking Ball was a full E Street album until Craig corrected me in this or the artist thread a few months back haha. Hard to think of it as anything else when I saw him play basically the whole album with the full band at Wrigley shortly after it came out.

 

I’m really blown away realizing how much better the old songs sound with age. The acoustic demos of his overstuffed ragamuffin lyrics never really did it for me. They just sounded too same-y. Slowed down with the confidence of the band behind them, they’re in their ideal setting and the lyrics land rather than overwhelming you and they’re much better than they would have been if released at the time.

 

Oh god, I watched the documentary and I was not prepared to watch Jon Landau weep while they record “I’ll See You in My Dreams”. Fuck me

 

god dammit ‘If I Were A Priest’ is so incredible.

 

Wonder if my local shop will have this on vinyl yet. might shuffle on down there tomorrow and see.

 

picked up the ‘limited edition’ 2xLP of this a few minutes ago, D-side etching that is pretty cool, and a really nice extra large booklet with the lyrics and some great photos. Don’t know what will be left out or different in a ‘standard edition’, but this was certainly worth the grab.

Edit: looks like standard is still 2xLP but just black, where this edition is a gray variant.

 

Documentary was really touching.

 

Haven’t caught the documentary yet but I have loved this album this weekend.

 

How do I watch the doc?

 

AppleTV+ or whereever you rip streams haha

 

Album is great. Would probably agree that it’s his best since magic.

 

Wrecking Ball *should have been* an E Street Band album, just like many of his other albums. But not all, as cshadows2887 pointed out - although we disagree about WB, the others I agree with.

 

I just keep thinking how lucky we are that Bruce continues to share with us, even after all these years. Not only through his music but things like the documentary are so special to me. It’s so corny but when I’m in the moment it feels like he’s speaking to me personally and it’s like he’s someone I’ve known all my life. What an amazing soul. I felt truly grateful for Western Stars last year and to receive another absolutely splendid album a year later is more than I could ever have asked for.

 

still wild to me that Western Stars was only last year, i feel like i’ve had so much more time with that album.

 

I have been listening to this record almost nonstop since it's release.

Ghosts, Rainmaker, Last Man Standing, and If I Were A Priest are huge standouts for me.

Has anyone else watched the film on Apple Music? It's wonderful, too.