KEY POINTS:
Rating: * * *
Well, you've got admire the man's timing. This fourth Springsteen album in five years comes out in the wake of his inauguration gig at the Lincoln Memorial and a few days before he and the E Street Band play the Superbowl. So he is not a man lacking for marketing opportunities - even the bonus track here comes from Mickey Rourke's awards-bait comeback movie, The Wrestler.
Coming after the politics of its Bush era predecessors, this album's title might indicate this is a soundtrack to the start of the Obama honeymoon.
Except once you're past the breezy optimism of that chorus, the dozen other tracks stop way short of saying much about the state of the nation - unlike 2007's Magic which had the Boss good and angry.
One could read Queen of the Supermarket as a plea for people to get back and contribute to the credit-crunched economy perhaps.
But the song - an ode to a checkout gal - is so overwrought, so near self-parody it should have stayed on the shelf. Perhaps in the Meat Loaf section.
Dream doesn't start out all that promisingly either. Opening track Outlaw Pete bangs on for eight minutes about the cowboy villain of the title over galloping strings, spaghetti western twanging and a melody line seemingly cribbed from Kiss's I Was Made for Loving You.
It's widescreen and slightly exhausting but it makes you thankful for the relative economy of what follows, whether's it's the spirited E-Street rockers of My Lucky Day, the Celtic shuffle of What Love Can Do or Springsteen's frequent urges to replicate Roy Orbison (Surprise, Surprise) or the Beach Boys (This Life), or throw in earthy blues on the harmonica-soaked Good Eye.
With that fine film ballad as well as The Last Carnival - dedicated to late E-Street keyboardist Danny Federici - this finishes somewhere far quieter but more substantial than where it starts.
It's a lopsided affair, feeling more like a batch of songs which didn't make the cut for Magic, and less about Bruce's pop symphony to a new era of hope. Likeable around the edges, but no Dream run.
Russell Baillie
