‘MAGIC’

‘MAGIC’

Bruce Springsteen (Columbia)

Grade: A

On his new album with the E Street Band, “Magic,” due out Tuesday, Bruce Springsteen gets down to business behind a small army of overdriven guitars.

“This is radio nowhere/Is there anybody alive out there?”

“Radio Nowhere” qualifies as a near-parody of Springsteen-speak with its references to “the last long American night” and “driving through the misty rain .?.?. searching for a mystery train.” But it’s also a reaffirmation that Springsteen and the E Street Band are still a pretty good rock band when they want to be. Everything feels just a little rushed, breathless; even saxophonist Clarence Clemons, who essentially plays the same solo every time, keeps his contribution quick and dirty.

“Radio Nowhere” shares a chord progression with Tommy Tutone’s 1982 hit “867-5309/Jenny.” But it also sets the tone for an album that sounds every bit as disillusioned as Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” did in 1978. Its characters feel disconnected from home, family, country, themselves. They wonder what they’ve become, and why. “Magic” doesn’t resort to war-is-bad administration-bashing. It’s a protest album that evokes rather than preaches.

Central to its tone is that Springsteen and the E Street Band lean into the songs with no-nonsense vigor. It’s about time. The singer and the E Streeters have been an off-and-on proposition for two decades. They part ways, get back together and cash in big-time on the road. But their prime currency has been nostalgia. They haven’t made a great album together in 23 years. The 2002 Springsteen-E Street reunion album, “The Rising,” embraced Celtic music, gospel and country, and felt soft.

On “Magic,” the Brendan O’Brien production is still big and polished, but it’s not fussy. Saxophones, keyboards and strings mostly provide ornamentation. The focus is on Max Weinberg’s drums and the guitars of Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren.

The bolder sound suits the subject matter. The songs are crowded with outcasts and walking wounded. “Gypsy Biker” oozes the menace of an Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western soundtrack, with harmonica whining and guitar strings bending with menace. “The Last to Die” ostensibly chronicles the flight of two desperadoes with a blood-pumping groove. But it turns on a question that directly addresses an interminable desert war: “Who will be the last to die for a mistake?”

Certain songs don’t just echo the past, they openly mimic it. “I’ll Work for Your Love” rejiggers the 1973 romantic declaration “I Came for You.” And “Livin’ in the Future” swaggers like the second coming of the 1975 R&B rave-up “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” But the comforting sounds are often deceptive. Election day rolls around on the latter song, and a menacing stranger arrives with “the barrel of a pistol spinnin’ round.”

It makes for an album in which Springsteen and the E Street Band conjure the ghosts of their hardest-hitting music, 1975-80. But the singer’s lyrics don’t look back. They are about right now and a scary, uncertain future.

—Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

‘ECHOES, SILENCE, PATIENCE
& GRACE’

Foo Fighters (Roswell/RCA)

Grade:

“Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace” shares much in common with the previous five Foo Fighters albums released by frontman Dave Grohl and Co. For one thing, it’s very good. The man can write catchy foot-tapping rock songs all day long, tagging on anthemic choruses like afterthoughts.

But in a lot of ways this album is more complex and challenging than anything the band has done before. It’s two discs of “In Your Honor,” the 2005 double album that featured acoustic and electric discs, smashed together in an often pleasing fusion.

Sure, there are the rock songs that hit your soft spot like comfort food — “The Pretender” and “But, Honestly.”

But the best pieces are the more introspective songs Grohl can surprise you with when you consider his punk and heavy metal roots. Grohl shows off his voice and his ability to write catchy hooks on these pieces.

The Foo Fighters put it all together on “Come Alive,” a shape-changer that starts with a croon-along acoustic introduction and ends in head-banging bliss.

Grohl shows off on the acoustic guitar during lazy-afternoon reflections on “Stranger Things Have Happened.”

Then he tosses in an oddly pleasing acoustic instrumental interlude evocative of Jimmy Page’s more reflective noodling before finishing with “Home,” a strings-inflected song that serves as a melancholy goodbye.

—Chris Talbott, Associated Press

‘SONGS ABOUT GIRLS’

will.i.am (Interscope)

Grade: C+

As a producer-for-hire, the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am has managed to earn some respect from his music industry peers despite the hokey pop for which his group is known. His discography includes tracks for a wide range of artists such as Too Short, Common, Justin Timberlake and Sergio Mendes. However, he’s best known for producing at least two of the most awful but unavoidable songs in recent history — bandmate Fergie’s “Fergalicious” and the Peas’s “My Humps.”

On his major label solo debut “Songs About Girls,” will.i.am mines that similar silly terrain, with two odes to female posteriors — “I Got It From My Mama” and “Donque,” featuring a lazy verse from Snoop Dogg. The rest of the disc is an infuriating collection of often awkwardly phrased rhymes over mostly emotionless, ’80s-inspired dance music tracks, and surprisingly inviting soul-pop ditties about when relationships go south.

It’s those latter moments, when will.i.am veers into more melodic territory — as on the opener “Over” and later on “Invisible” — where the disc displays glimpses of his less contrived self. If will.i.am wasn’t so beholden to (and adept at) producing the type of radio-friendly hits that become so painfully ubiquitous, then “Songs About Girls” would have been memorable for more of the right reasons.

—Brett Johnson, Associated Press

‘WASHINGTON SQUARE SERENADE’

Steve Earle (New West)

Grade: B+

It’s been years since Steve Earle broke with the Nashville music scene, delving into gritty rock and anti-war politics. With “Washington Square Serenade,” he puts the town of his youth even farther behind him.

Earle clearly has a new love: New York City, his current home and the backdrop for his new release, his first in three years. Recorded at the city’s Electric Lady Studios, the album has a certain urban flair, probably thanks to producer John King of the Dust Brothers, who’s worked with the Beastie Boys and Beck.

But the songs are unmistakably Earle, replete with plucked guitars, foot-stomping rhythms and world-weary vocals. The opening track, “Tennessee Blues,” tells of a road trip from “guitar town” — also the title of Earle’s 1986 debut — to the Big Apple.

In the next song, “Down Here Below,” the setting shifts to New York, and Earle bemoans the struggles played out there. He conjures the city’s neighborhoods, bridges and trains, as well as some of its people, including the late journalist Joseph Mitchell.

Earle teams with Forro in the Dark, a New York band with members from Brazil, on “City of Immigrants,” an upbeat ode to the city’s stew of cultures.

But for all of Earle’s attention to New York, he strikes many personal notes on “Washington Square Serenade.” He longs for a lost lover on “Come Home to Me” and harmonizes with his wife, the singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, on “Days Aren’t Long Enough.”

For pure songwriting value, “Washington Square Serenade” doesn’t disappoint. It’s quieter than some of Earle’s other albums, but its reflective themes — about his surroundings and himself — are clear. Like so many other artists, Earle has found in New York a reliable muse.

—Daniel Lovering, Associated Press

‘JESUS IS COMING’

The Bellamy Brothers (Curb)

Grade: B

“Jesus Is Coming” is the first gospel album for the Bellamy Brothers, the veteran country-pop duo. Except for the standard “I’ll Fly Away” and a “gospel mix” of their big ‘70s hit “Let Your Love Flow” that doesn’t sound very gospel, it consists of new original material.

With songs such as “Grandma’s God” and “Faith Came Back to Me,” the Bellamys sing like ones who have been out in the world and returned to embrace the bedrock values they grew up with, but they do so in a way that’s not judgmental or self-righteous. As with their secular material, they sometimes inject humor, whether it’s the cornball wordplay of “Drug Problem” or “Lord Help Me Be the Kind of Person (My Dog Thinks I Am).” Believe it or not, when they declare that “Jesus Is Coming” and add, “And boy is he p-,” the reasons they give are much like those Mavis Staples sang about on her own gospel album earlier this year.

—Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer