Bruce Springsteen – Letter To You

I'll just speak to the vinyl mastering and pressing quality-- I have the B&W splatter version, bought it from his website-- overall, it's pretty damn good. I have not known most recent Columbia vinyl releases to be very good with regards to surface noise and warpage. When you add in multicolored vinyl things only get more complicated from there. This vinyl release is reasonably quiet, pressed flat, looks cool, and, though a skootch more compressed than I would prefer, has solid full sound. The mastering is excellent. Crank it up and it will put your room to the test. Bruce and the E Street Band have crafted another excellent album overall-- their best in ages I think-- but who am I to say? The overall packaging is beautiful. As is the booklet. The choice of papers, the wintery imagery which kind of smears and freezes time, the colors that suggest beginnings and endings-- really well done!

This is available on Bruce’s site for $36. Do not pay $70-$90 bucks on Discogs for it.

In the twilight of his life, the Boss burned down most of the myths surrounding his music and muse, laid the world flat with honest true stories regarding those songs, all while playing like he was forty-five on Broadway. Yet here I stand, feeling a bit like the man himself, ing seeing one of his earliest shows, before anyone even whispered his name, and now at seventy-one, his bandmates have been disappearing around him, as have my friends and heroes … leaving the songs found here on Letter To You sounding very much like ghosts who’ve walked in off the autumn mist, determined to sit awhile, to spin some new yarns, to bring some tears to my eyes, to edge my life with a sly smile as I’m still able to tap my heart knowing that I was ‘there then’ for so much musical beauty, as Bruce breaths a bit more fresh air into these lungs, allowing me to dance across the room as if I were still twenty-one and just back from Viet Nam, stronger than any woman has the right to be, where he wove a soundtrack for all the secrets I’ll never speak of ’til I’ve nothing else to say.

With what’s left of the E Street Band, Bruce recorded these prophetic haunting songs live in only five days, sounding as if he’d found himself awake in the middle of the night, where these numbers were spilled across the ether, across the rooftops, to everyone and to no one in particular, laced with a bit of bittersweetness, yet without a sense of finality or loss. A Letter To You is an entirely cinematic album, nearly a black & white film noir declaration of his past present and future, where hints of ancient numbers can be heard folding mystically in and around the edges, securing each number with a bit of unexpected authentic intimacy.

This is not to say that all of the songs work well, consider “House Of A Thousand Guitars,” a song that aims directly at “Born To Run,” yet falls rather flat both lyrically and musically, as does “The Power Of Prayer,” as Springsteen’s preference of faith are of little interest to most. Regardless, Letter To You is a very life affirming affair, and often sounding much larger than life, as his songs did back in the first half of the 1970’s. The record’s delightfully monochromatic and fits like a perfect pair of jeans, each track suitable for a video, while being emotionally cut from a single piece of wood with not a single blemish, a wasted wishful reflection for the alchemy of triumph and vision, giving me reason to believe, and perhaps a reason and explanation as to just why I’ve survived along with him.

*** The Fun Facts: The album is available on CD and as double black vinyl production, the latter of which has one etched side. There’s also indie-only grey vinyl set from Rough Trade, and while not to be outdone, JPC in have put forth an exclusive double album on splattered black and white vinyl.

Review by Jenell Kesler