High Hopes

Morello is all over this album with mixed results. There are some great songs here.

As an artist, he’s always lived and died by the principle that the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. High Hopes, by contrast, is precisely as good as its best material and as bad as its worst, nothing more and nothing less.

The selections run the predictable gamut of great to interesting to wholly disposable, but the breadth of material here nonetheless reaffirms Springsteen’s talents as a songwriter and interpreter of others’ work.

The best of them--mostly the resigned or farseeing songs, the songs that have no hero and no story--rise above the odds. But a large portion of the record feels, let’s say, official.

Given that these recordings span different eras and sessions, High Hopes does have a cohesiveness, flow, and degrees of greatness, but unlike the career-spanning rarities comp Tracks, there's nothing about these lost or revisited songs that screams out "Jackpot!"

[The record] takes the idea of a stopgap album full of odds and ends and reimagines it as something much more satisfying.

Morello appears on most of the tracks here, and he's largely an enlivening presence, electrifying Springsteen's revolutionary spark, but he still hasn't figured out how to open up a solo without changing the entire tone of a song. Springsteen himself has a similar problem, struggling to deliver pointed social critique without sliding into his comfort zones.

Perhaps its on-the-hoof, anomalous nature is the source of a sense that High Hopes, though good, doesn't feel either like a set of surprising others sides or quite as cohesive or great as the title of 'new Springsteen album' (as opposed to say 'iTunes bonus tracks', or 'B-side collection', which might have been more fitting categories) might demand.

High Hopes may be a stopgap, but it is one assembled with tender, loving care.

There’s not much new here, but Springsteen has always traded on a maudlin permanent nostalgia that only works because it’s so fucking earnest that it blasts through our attempts to be cynical about it.

In spite of its shortcomings, High Hopes will tide fans over until the next bona fide LP.

Perhaps inevitably, given the material's scattered provenance High Hopes lacks the cohesion, both thematic and sonic that characterised Magic and Wrecking Ball. [Feb 2014, p.86]

There’s a lot of great stuff on here, but it doesn’t hold together and doesn’t come close to being one of Springsteen’s great albums.

With High Hopes, Springsteen splashes his brightest colors against a canvas, crosses his fingers, and hopes they mesh.

With its sharply defined highs and curiously odd misses, there’s more than enough here for dedicated fans to sift through, to extrapolate new shades of Springsteen from. For the rest of us, though, there isn’t quite enough to hold our attention.

Given Morello’s dynamite live sets with the E Street Band, it’s a shame that the Springsteen album with his biggest influence is so underwhelming.

Too many songs disappoint, though.

Little wonder the two finest moments ["Hunter of Invisible Game" and "The Wall"] on this otherwise ho-hum Springsteen album are by a considerable margin its most understated.

As such, High Hopes is a standstill album, momentous for being the first effort in a long time where The Boss appears speechless at the podium.

It's well within the Boss' right to try and freshen up old material, especially 18 albums in, but this one lacks a through-line beyond the distracting (and occasionally straight-up embarrassing) Morello.

Nearly all the tracks on High Hopes are wildly overproduced and arranged, leaving no room to rock.

[A] lackluster High Hopes.