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Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Nettles Leads This Week's New Releases

01/15/2014
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(Radio.com) Radio.com's Dan Weiss runs down the week's new full-length music releases including his album of the week pick from Bruce Springsteen, as well as new albums from Jennifer Nettles and Rosanne Cash.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Bruce Springsteen � High Hopes (Columbia): A mess, as you've heard, with all the subtlety of a Kanye interview, thus also pretty fun. Every which way there's old songs, covers, alternate versions, dusted off and lacquered up with orchestras, hair-metal dynamics, trumpets, bagpipes, and crassest of all, E Street new blood Tom Morello, who adds three minutes and a faux turntable solo to "The Ghost of Tom Joad." I'll take the slowcore '94 version, not to mention "Hunter of Invisible Game," the stringy 90s Dylan-90s Zevon m�lange that precedes it here. "Down in the Hole" is the most shambolic offender here, with a pretty, well-plucked tune that can't decide if it's a slow one or a double-time ticktocker like "I'm on Fire," which you can sing over it. It's followed by "Heaven's Wall," which breaks from a Latin percussion-cum-Justin Timberlake intro and an insistent choir into "Orange Crush"-style bowed rock.

Better are the occasionally gorgeous mutterings of "The Wall," echoing like a ballad off Tom Waits' Bone Machine, and the Stones-y "Frankie Fell in Love." Except for Bruce Springsteen's well-timed feedback screeches in the tumbling Gypsy punk title track, Morello's overchucked solos mostly embarrass, though the incredible "American Skin (41 Shots)" remains unassailable even with full-on Achtung Baby production, and still depressingly necessary in the wake of Trayvon Martin. Again, a mess. But there's not a bad song in the outrageously-produced bunch. And the grandpa-funk of "Harry's Place" has something to teach Arcade Fire.

Rosanne Cash � The River and the Thread (Blue Note): One of the 80s' most distinctive and easygoing "country" stars, you'd think she'd hire Haim to reunite her with those gated studio effects. Instead she follows two albums that mourned her famous parents seven years ago by venturing back down from Manhattan for some of her most plainspoken, organic new originals. Unlike Springsteen, Rosanne Cash wields a string section with effective delicacy on "A Feather's Not a Bird" and employs shrewd na-na-nas for the catchy "Modern Blue," and all over the place turns in some of her sharpest songwriting ever. Her highest highs might have never scratched the legacy of, oh, timely reissuer Lucinda Williams, but Cash sure makes it look so much easier.

Jennifer Nettles � That Girl (Mercury Nashville): Probably no more for fans than distant respecters who dig on her main band's "Settlin'" or "Take Me as I Am," this acoustic R&B showcase for her gigantic voice shows off her pyrotechnics without quite making the case Jennifer Nettles can go on without Sugarland, mostly skittering across rimshots and strum until it's time to go full Bob Seger on, you guessed it, "Like a Rock." But while she can occasionaly belt the anthems that Sharon Jones or Rosanne Cash can't, she's far less reliable a songwriter and far less fleet of foot, so only the opener "Falling" will set your blood afire. See what other new releases made the list.

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Copyright Radio.com/CBS Local - Excerpted here with permission.

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