Today's Stories

January 19, 2009

Kevin Alexander Gray
Time for an New Divestment Campaign

January 16-18, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to the Chief

Caoimhe Butterly
Terribly Bloodied, Still Breathing

Audrey Stewart /
Kathy Kelly
Suddenly Bombs Started Falling: Report from Gaza

Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Geo. W. Bush, a Concise Biography

Ellen Cantarow
I Could Not Save a Single Child

Neve Gordon
How to Sell "Ethical" Warfare

Vijay Prashad
An African-American in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Attack Injures 1.5 Million Gazans

Rannie Amiri
The UN in Israel's Crosshairs

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Forgotten Child

Joshua Frank
Forecasting Obama

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney

Brian Cloughley
Who Runs America?

Belén Fernández
Changing the Equation

Missy Beattie
Peace and Justice Denied

Fred Gardner
Growing Pot for Research

George Ciccariello-Maher
"Oakland is Closed!"

John V. Whitbeck
Democracy Not Partition

Stephen Fleischman
Card Check

Mischa Gaus
Medicare for All! Tackling Union Opposition to Single-Payer

Saul Landau
The End of the Affair

Norm Kent
Perils of the Grow House

Alejandro López
Give Bush the Shoe! (and Send Us the Photo)

David Yearsley
The Glory That Was Dresden

James McEnteer
Doin' the Time Warp Again

Lorenzo Wolff
An Album That Lives Up to Its Cover

Kim Nicolini
Patti Smith's Dream of Life

Poets' Basement
Three Financial Poems by Brian J. Foley

Website of the Day
Lancet: Medical Conditions in Gaza

January 15, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Powerhouses Invested Alongside Madoff

Karl Grossman
Obama and the Military - Industrial - Scientific Complex

M. Shahid Alam
Gaza's Shattered Mirror

Jules Rabin
Gaza Besieged, Gaza Mauled

Alan Farago
The Nail-Gun Bailout

Ron Jacobs
The State of Black America: From Oscar Grant to Barack Obama

Timothy Seidel
Just Violence in Gaza? The Calculus of Proportionality

George Ochenski
Why No Montana Wilderness?

Todd Chretien
Taking a Stand for Justice in Oakland

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test

Website of the Day
Uranium Watch

January 14, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
Killing Children With Impunity

Kathy Kelly
Cease Fire, Cease Siege

Franklin Lamb
A Second Front? Hezbollah Militants Chafe as Gaza Burns

Mike Whitney
The Big Contraction: Why the Stimulus Alone Won't Work

Paul Craig Roberts
The Humiliation of America

Glen Ford
Sullying Dr. King's Legacy: the Congressional Black Caucus and Israel

Aditya Chakrabortty
The End of Property Porn

Dave Lindorff
Fattening the Rats: Feeding at the Bailout Trough

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Arab Parties From Elections

David Swanson
Conyers Explains Why He Didn't Push Impeachment

Martha Rosenberg
Fragile: Handle with Risperdal

Website of the Day
Report of a Red Cross Worker in Gaza

January 13, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Is Israel Using Experimental Weapons in Gaza?

Michael Neumann
Hamas and Gaza: Slave Revolts and Passionate Evasions

Coleen Rowley /
William John Cox
No Victors in the War on Dissent

Robert Sandels
Cuba and the Obama Administration: Subversion Through Trade?

Saul Landau
The Changeling: an Obama Nightmare

David Swanson
What to Ask Eric Holder

Wajahat Ali
Waltzing with War Crimes

Sam Bahour
No Other Option? A View From the West Bank

Stanley Heller
Why It's Useless to Lobby Congress on Gaza

Robert Jensen
Beyond Grief and Rage

Robin Mittenthal
Eating Away at the Land That Feeds Us

Website of the Day
The 50 Most Loathsome People in America

January 12, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Blood-Stained Monster Enters Gaza

Paul Craig Roberts
Our Collapsing Economy

Mike Whitney
Israel's Moral and Political Insanity

Ewa Jasiewicz
Oh, Quiet Night: Only Six Homes Were Bombed

Bill Quigley
A Day in Gaza

Dave Lindorff
From Vietnam to Gaza

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Blowback From a Tragic Error: a Message to Barack Obama

Jonathan Cook
Israel Ponders the Third Stage

Andy Worthington
Seven Years of Guantánamo

Kara N. Tina
Oakland on Fire

Brenda Norrell
Palestinians and American Indians: Russell Means Breaks the Silence on Obama

Nour Kharma
A Plea From a Teen in Gaza: "Will I Die, Too?"

Website of the Day
The Villages Group: an Antiwar Alliance in Sderot

January 9/11, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Israel's Onslaught on Gaza: Criminal, for Sure; But Also Stupid

Kathy Kelly
Tunnel Vision: Report from Arish, Egypt

Bill Quigley
Report From Rafah: Doctors Stopped at the Border

George Ciccariello-Maher
Oakland's Not for Burning?

Elaine C. Hagopian
Gaza: History Matters

Mike Roselle
Drowning in a Toxic River: What Can be Done to Save Appalachia?

Steve Hendricks
The Torturer-Elect?

Gary Leupp
Revisiting the Tale of Samson

Jonathan Cook
Outcry Over Israel's War Crimes

Karim Makdisi
The Ceasefire Plan: the UN Finally Acts, But Does It Mean Anything?

Rannie Amiri
Livni's Big Lie

Peter Morici
In the Jaws of a Depression

Peter Montague
Can Chemicals be Regulated?

Ralph Nader
Move Fast to Restore the Rule of Law

Andy Worthington
The Dying Days of the Guantánamo Trials

Nadia Hijab
A Music School Silenced in Gaza

Dan Bacher
Unholy Alliance: Nature Conservancy Backs Schwarzenegger's Big Ditch

Catherine Fenton
The American Peace Movement and Israel

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Caught Stealing

Valia Kaimaki
Why Greek Youths Took to the Streets

Richard Morse
Haiti's Gas Gang

David Yearsley
To Gotham City with Dexter Gordon

Charles R. Larson
The Horror, the Horror

Richard Rhames
Gaza and the Goon Squad Meet the Wizard

Stephen Martin
Meltdown Memo to Come?

Lorenzo Wolff
What They Sing About When They Sing About Love

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Beatty and Valentine

Website of the Weekend
Gaza Protest

January 8, 2009

Jean Bricmont /
Diana Johnstone
Gaza Seen From Paris

Franklin Lamb
How Dershowitz Misstates, Misrepresents and Misapplies the Law

Paul Craig Roberts
The Difficulty of Being an Informed American

Kevin Alexander Gray
Give Burris His Seat

Chris Floyd
The Enduring Priorities in Obama's Time of Change

Ewa Jasiewicz
Riding on Fire in Gaza

Steve Conn
Sanjay Gupta and Obama

Harvey Wasserman
Kill the Nuclear Stimulus!

Wayne S. Smith
An Opening to Cuba?

Linda Mamoun
Re-settling Gaza: the Real Goal of the Israeli Invasion?

Adam Turl
Unions and Young Workers

Chris Papaleonardos
Mourning Maria Dimitriadi

Website of the Day
On the Wing

January 7, 2009

Saree Makdisi
What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel?

Franklin Lamb
Bend Over Professor Dershowitz, It's Time for Your Check Up

William Blum
America's Other Glorious War

Belén Fernández
The Trauma Vortex: Israel's Monopoly on Psychological Suffering

Lawrence Davidson
What is New About Gaza?

Allan Nairn
Adm. Dennis Blair and the Church Killings in East Timor

Jonathan Cook
What is Israel's Objective?

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Watching the War on BBC

Deepak Tripathi
Bush, as He Leaves

Cal Winslow
Now is the Hour to Defend Democracy in the Labor Movement!

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Students Planning Careers: Be Mindful

Dr. Hannah Safran
No More Recycled Military Solutions

Website of the Day
CNN: Israel Broke the Ceasefire First

January 6, 2009

Pam Martens
It's All One Big Lie

Victoria Buch
Real Estate War in Gaza: the History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing

Neve Gordon
Israel's New War Ethic

Tami Sarfatti /
Yonatan Mendel
What Silence Says: Gaza is Still Waiting on Obama

Mike Whitney
The Gaza Bloodbath

Alan Farago
After the Fall

Gary Leupp
A Hamas Coup d'Etat in 2007?

Larry Everest
Silent Partner: the US-Backed War on Gaza

Ron Jacobs
The New Iraqi Sovereignty

David Macaray
Union-Busting is Alive and Well

Stephanie Basile
Where's Anna's Money?

Stacey Warde
An Uncle's Unrest

Website of the Day
Israeli Refusenik on Gaza

January 5, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Will There be a Recovery?

Sousan Hammad
Phoning Home to Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Flying While Brown

Mats Svensson
Longing in Gaza

Jen Marlowe
Abeer's Baby

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Gaza Phone Tag

Brian Cloughley
Israel is Immune From Criticism

Faheem Hussain
Gaza and India: a View From Pakistan

William Cook
Consider the Realities of Gaza

Dr. Trudy Bond
The Madness Among Us

Christopher Ketcham
The Revenge of the Blogger at the National Press Club: a Rotten Washington Interlude

Steve Early
Who Rules SEIU?

Dave Lindorff
When It Comes to Terrorism and POW Cases, Equal Justice Under Law is a Joke

Website of the Day
The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River Basin

January 2 - 4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Diary of 2008: an Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

Uri Avnery
Molten Lead in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Omar Barghouti
UN Complicity in Israel's Massacre in Gaza

Graham Usher
Where Pakistan's Generals and the ISI Draw Their Lines

P. Sainath
The Economy is Worse Than It Appears

Belén Fernández
Pardon Our Dust: Israel's PR Campaign for Gaza

Deb Reich
Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008

Gary Leupp
Defacing Mr. Jefferson's Wall: Preachers and the Inauguration

Michael Yates
Top Chef or Top Wage Thief? Tom Colicchio and the Economics of Restaurants

Joanne Mariner
How to Close Guantánamo

Seth Sandronsky
Funding the Israeli Military: the US Pipeline

Cynthia McKinney
We Lived to Tell the Story

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Dogs of War

Deepak Tripathi
Gaza in Perspective

Robert Fantina
Obama, Afghanistan and Israel

John Ross
The Year No One Can Remember

Norm Kent
The Heat on Duval Street: Why Head Shop Raids are Unfair and Unjust

Larry Portis
Syria and the Arab Barbie Doll--Before the Deluge

Richard Rhames
Is Conscience Dead?

Dee C. Lubell
We Come From the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright

David Yearsley
A Gay German at the Courts of the Medici and Hanover, and of Course the BBC

Lorenzo Wolff
Joe Ely, the Fighting Rooster of Rock

Marc Catone
Looting Lennon's Legacy

Poets' Basement
Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Website of the Weekend
Earth in High Rez

January 1, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
If Hamas Did Not Exist

Oren Ben-Dor
The Self-Defense of Suicide

Wajahat Ali
The U.S. Response to the Gaza Crisis: Unfair and Unbalanced

Saul Landau
In Cuba No One Man Could Steal $50 Billion From Other People

David Michael Green
What to Expect While We're Expecting

Website of the Day
Morbid Anatomy

December 31, 2008

Pam Martens
Wall Street's Collapse and the Ownership Society

Neve Gordon /
Jeff Halper
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Ted Honderich
The First Casualty of Israel's War

Brian Cloughley
Five Little Girls on a Sofa: Gaza's One-Sided Images

Ron Jacobs
What is Hamas, Really?

Vijay Prashad
Hot Rod and His Sikh Warrior: Blago's Indian Connections

Franklin Lamb
Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

Mike Whitney
My Brilliant Career

David Macaray
What Really Killed the Auto Bailout

Richard Thieme
The Betrayal of the Commons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Who Wins What in Gaza?

Stephen Lendman
The Troubling Case of the Fort Dix Five

Worthy Group of the Day
Western Shoshone Defense Project

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

Tariq Ali
The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

Robert Bryce
The $775,000-a-Year GI

Jonathan Cook
Electioneering with Bombs

Gary Leupp
The Fishbarrel War

Dave Lindorff
Tough Guys Don't Walk: Will Cheney Seek a Pardon?

Brian McKenna
Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

John Walsh
The End of the Green Party

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the World

Bob Sommer
The Education of David Frost

Worthy Activist of the Day
Support Marie Mason

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

MLK Day Edition
January 19, 2009

Springsteen: Life Itself

Obama's Bard Dreams of Gold, Grabs Brass

By HARRY BROWNE

Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Working on a Dream, is….

This is going to be difficult, so bear with me for a couple of minutes.

Bruce Springsteen is in his 60th year. For more than half his life, and two-thirds of my own, I’ve loved him to distraction, measured my private life by his public thresholds. He’s the only celebrity I regularly dream about. For 14 years I’ve written about his work, with only the rarest harsh word, in the Irish Times, Village magazine and (to the sound of gnashing teeth from unpersuaded but indulgent editors) here at CounterPunch.

Long story short: since I last weighed in here 16 months ago, with a review of Magic, the ‘relationship’ has been as rich as ever: our toddler made a thousand requests for ‘Buffalo Gals’; I saw a Christmas 2007 gig in Belfast with the E Street Band and my 12-year-old daughter, who usually prefers hip-hop but danced the night away; and Springsteen sang ‘No Surrender’ -- the rock song, not the Ulster-loyalist slogan -- in peaceful but still-Paisleyite East Belfast.

Then came May last year, when Bruce and the band came to Dublin, outdoors. On a warm Sunday evening, standing in the middle of a football field, just as the band kicked off I felt the back of my right leg turn wet. I turned around to see who had spilled the (warm) beer and saw a tall, scraggly-bearded, peacefully bemused man zipping up his fly. Luckily I was much less drunk than he was: he could only shrug, like Jesus to Pilate, when I asked him for a reason why I shouldn’t kill him. After a minute when my brain scrambled and he couldn’t muster the decency to at least move elsewhere, I dragged him 40 yards to the security guys. They ejected him, then pitied my plight and that of anyone who might have to stand beside me and my piss-soaked pants: they gave me wristbands that got my partner and me into ‘the pit’, the rather-roomier privileged zone near the stage.

So the silent piss-artist did me a favour. More than that: as the evening went on I came to believe, in my Catholic-atheist heart, that it was a benediction, because there was the real presence of Bruce just a few yards away, playing the gig of a lifetime, looking like he could bust with enjoyment of himself, in all that self’s contradictions, the rock-star and the genuine mensch, earnest and comic, solipsist and rabble-rouser, pushing-60 and sex machine. When the rain came, my second-baptism was complete and, trust me, this sinner had badly needed a wash.

That’s my story, just a fan’s love story. Meanwhile, out where the rest of you could see him, Bruce was doing the whole Obama thing. Fine, good, Yes We Can indeed, mazel tov, you do what you gotta do. Fans started to think it looked a bit cynical by November, though, when politics and product met at the crossroads. Super Bowl halftime show? Oh dear. A new album already -- its release date nestled between The Inauguration Starring Barack Obama and Featuring Bruce Springsteen and the big game? Hmm, okay. A certified super-sensitive Oscar-ready movie song? Nice for him. The title track of the album, ‘Working on a Dream’, apart from surgically conjoining his own two lifelong themes, obviously referencing Obama and All That History and debuting during NFL on NBC the week after the election? Huh. A(nother) greatest-hits album on sale in January and being sold as a Wal-Mart exclusive? Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart?? Get outta here.

And then all this PR stuff about what a blast it was for a change to work on an album quickly without all the, you know, preparation and worry that he used to do (“What, me precious?”) and the avoidance of the obvious conclusion that someone is moving fast to cash in on high visibility and, sure, who wouldn’t, but this is supposed to be Bruce Springsteen whose shit don’t stink.

And I guess it don’t, because this week the new album is streaming free and exclusive on the website of -- wait for it -- NPR. All’s right with the world, then. So what about this album?

The good news is: brevity. Like the last one, Working on a Dream is vinyl-LP length without bonus tracks. (That’s nice, though oddly enough the pricy vinyl version has a bonus track and thus is stretched out improbably over two discs.) Really you can do without the bonus tracks, unless you’ve “ever seen a one-legged dog makin’ his way down the street” (‘The Wrestler’). No, I didn’t think you had.

Anyway, deep breath, here’s the bad news. At this point I can’t find much coherence on the record to guide my writing about it, apart from a thread that says something vaguely uplifting like, “Life’s a tough old journey sometimes, but stick with it, keep workin’, keep playin’, keep lovin’, keep dreamin’, it can be good too.” So I’ll go through the just-my-opinion notes track by track.

Outlaw Pete: It’s reminiscent of one of Bob Dylan’s long legend-y westerns but with more obvious portent and overblown orchestration, breaking up the rhythm in the way Bob wouldn’t. Our sins catch up with us, across the deserts and mountains and plains, seemingly, but our beautiful half-Navajo daughter lives on, bathing in the river. Maybe mock-autobiographical, or a metaphor for something important -- there are a few existential cries, and the backing vocalists significantly hum Kiss’s ‘I Was Made for Loving You’ -- but just as I can’t be bothered unpicking Dylan’s gunslinger yarns, this one stays literal for me, and not without its bright cinemascope moments (soundtrack by ersatz Morricone) along the epic eight-minute way.

My Lucky Day: I wasn’t impressed with this bland love-rocker on its early release, but it’s enriched in the album context if you use it to fill in Outlaw Pete’s gaps. (Yep, in eight minutes there are still gaps.) So imagine Outlaw Pete is the gambler and he’s singing to his Navajo woman: “You’re my lucky day/Well I lost all the other bets I made.” The message is you gotta keep playing to win. At last, gambling-addicts have a new anthem.

Working on a Dream: The Obamaniacal title track had me worried, when it sprang out in November, that we’d get a whole album of Baracknaphilia. It’s like ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ as sung by Roy Orbison, which means The Hope acknowledges The Pain. “I’m working on a dream, though it can feel so far away… Our love will make it real someday.” The whistling-break isn’t as corny as it might seem: whistling in pop music carries plenty of melancholy with it, from ‘White Christmas’ to ‘Jealous Guy’. Then there’s the wonderful False Hope whistling of Monty Python’s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, but Bruce, the Bard of Obama, would hardly be alluding to that, would he? Moreover, he is relying on us continuing to buy him in his working-man’s shirt, at least metaphorically. He wouldn’t dare sing, as Randy Newman did on last year’s ‘A Piece of the Pie’, “The rich are getting richer -- I should know.”

Queen of the Supermarket: Are you kidding? (Okay, granted, you probably are.) “I’m in love with the queen of the supermarket… The dream awaits in aisle number 2.” The sense-of-place is a mess: the “queen” is “behind the counter”? And bagging? In an aisle? Have you been in a supermarket, Bruce? Or is the guy in love with all the women in the store? This is by way of contrast to Magic’s ‘I’ll Work for Your Love’, where the love interest was a bar waitress and the detail was sharp and playful. It’s almost saved by the last lines, despite some awkward scansion: “As I lift my groceries into my car/ I turn back for a moment and catch a smile/ That blows this whole fuckin’ place apart.” The climax breaks the song’s profound torpor not only with its, um, cussedness, but by casting us suddenly back to a young Bruce, the singer of ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Badlands’ who ached to see shit blown apart. (It also suggests he parked in the handicapped zone if he can see her smile from his car.)

What Love Can Do: Lots, apparently. Just a hint of cock-rock (“Let me show you what love can do” indeed) but not enough to start the Viagra jokes. It’s vaguely political, sometimes indecipherable psycho-babble -- not characteristic of the album, by the way, where most of the lyrics are all-too-clear -- unredeemed by Springsteen’s description of it as “love in the time of Bush.” No, ‘Fuck the Pain Away’ it ain’t.

This Life: Makes ‘What Love Can Do’ sound like ‘Johnny B. Goode’. The only justification I can hear for its inclusion on any record that demands cash-payment from listeners is that it passingly echoes, musically, John Lennon’s ‘#9 Dream’. (Ah, you may say I’m working on a dream….) Again, a far-better Magic song comes to mind, ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’; ‘This Life’ has a similar soaring melody, when Springsteen can locate it, before descending into a Brian Wilson tribute. The best lyric in ‘This Life’ is, I swear: “I finger the hem of your dress/ My universe at rest.”

Good Eye: Now we’re talking. It hasn’t been everyone’s cup of tea, or quart of moonshine, but Bruce’s recent work has established that he can do American roots music. This is simple, nasty blues: “I had my good eye to the dark/ And my blind eye to the sun.” He sings it into a bullet microphone, as he did with ‘Reason to Believe’ on recent tours, and the distortion, well, blows the whole fucking place apart. So I got over the fact that, despite its title, the song isn’t actually about baseball.

Tomorrow Never Knows: Not that other John Lennon ditty of the same name. It’s country-folk acoustic stuff, a moment of Dylan’s ‘I Want You’ then quickly switching to John Prine’s ‘Love, Love, Love’. Which is all to the good, until and unless you start comparing the lyrics of those songs to this one. So don’t. Enjoy the song’s pretty simplicity, and its celebration of… pretty simplicity. It’s a little one for the recession.

Life Itself: Not a great song -- the sense of too-quick writing lingers, with Springsteen’s voice technically fine but the meter and phrasing half-assed. Still it is probably as close to a truly interesting lyric as there is on the album. For one thing, there’s another Beatles connection: George Harrison had a song of the same name -- about God. Springsteen’s is about an illicit lover (God?). The first verse captures something of the special obsession such a relationship entails, the rest sees things fall apart as such relationships do. The “I can’t make it without you” refrain sounds, at first, like another love-cliché, but by the end there’s a sense that neither party is going to survive. Especially if, as a Bruce-anorak, you hear the echoes of ‘Highway 29’ and its car-crash finale.

Kingdom of Days: This simultaneously swells and tinkles -- in short, arch-MOR. It seems like the antidote to ‘Life Itself’: a middle-aged couple surveys a happy realm, “our kingdom of days” where they, ahem, “count the wrinkles and grays.” It’s an okay metaphor, but it sounds like more work was done on the string section than on the lyrics. The best: “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I do/ You whisper ‘Then prove it, then prove it, then prove it to me, baby blue.’” Now you can start the Viagra jokes.

Surprise, Surprise: Who knew the Archies had re-formed? With Roger McGuinn on guitar? This is an ostensibly ‘fun’ Sixties-pop birthday song, with some Big Lyrics starting in verse 2 -- “In the hollow of the evening, as you lay your head to rest,” that sort of thing -- before the music pays another visit to Roy Orbison. The album is released near E Street Band organist Danny Federici’s birthday -- he died of cancer last April and would be 59 on Friday -- and there are ample hints in it this song is about death, and about hope for a happy re-birthday, a resurrection. Which sets up the next one....

The Last Carnival: This one is definitely sung to, for and about Danny: E Street fans will be at least somewhat moved by it, and others should appreciate the deftness and sincerity of the rock ’n’ roll-as-circus metaphor. Federici arguably contributed most to the carnival-fairground sound of the early E Street records. The song asks: “Where are you now, my darling Billy?” -- a thought that reaches 35 years back to ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story’, and 70 years back to an Almanac Singers anti-war song and centuries further again via them and Jerry Lee Lewis into the depths of the folk tradition. Mostly spare and acoustic, it’s easily the most delicate and accomplished song here, and perhaps something of a coda for the E Street Band on a studio-recorded release.

And that’s it. Okay, first impressions aren’t always the best, but this is pop music and should be adept at making first impressions. I’m especially wary of hyperbole at this early stage of listening -- there is a hook or two that might grow on me -- but, yes, off the top of my head I can’t think of a less plausible 11 minutes on a Springsteen disc than the sequence from ‘Queen of the Supermarket’ through ‘This Life’. Take those minutes out and I’d promote the album to ‘tolerable’.

Springsteen the notorious perfectionist is now seeing what it feels like, and earns like, to toss out a CD. I’ve no ideological commitment to slow record-making, but Working on a Dream is the clearest evidence to date that its suits Springsteen best, at least with his own songs. This album is not merely Unimportant -- I’m relieved he hasn’t made another political album, given the rich opportunity this historic moment offers for icky liberalism. At times it isn’t competent; it’s not clever, it’s not moving, it’s not thought-provoking, it’s not ass-shaking; there’s hardly a character, an image or an observation that sticks in the brain. It is untouched by greatness. Its best moments (as opposed to its ridiculous ones, which have their own crazy charm) come seemingly almost by accident -- most poignantly, the accident of Danny Federici’s death.

I suspect many other reviews will be more indulgent, because of what are, for Springsteen, poppy novelties. Often there’s a decent beat or a grabby opening or an attractive soundscape (attractive through small earphones or in a car, not quite so much on a decent hi-fi, but that’s the way of the production world these days), sometimes lush Sixties-plus-strings-and-throw-in-a-choir-of-angels. That’s fine by me: Magic was steeped in dense musical nostalgia. But on this album half the tunes feel unfinished, and most of the lyrics just pass the time ’til the next big-budget burst of pop pastiche from producer Brendan O’Brien. Mostly it’s hard to believe I’m listening to the band I saw just a few months ago, blowing the whole fucking place apart.

It’s okay, though. These things happen. History will record that 2008 messed with a lot of people’s minds. Sure, doesn’t the album’s cover picture come right out and tell us that Bruce’s head is in the clouds? (And, hey, isn’t that another John Lennon reference?)

I don’t even have to reach for the old LPs and CDs for comfort, because Springsteen has driven out of tight artistic jams before, and I reckon the next one is going to be just brilliant. Take your time, Bruce.

Working on a Dream is on the NPR website this week and starts being officially released on Friday.

Harry Browne lectures in the School of Media at Dublin Institute of Technology and is author of CounterPunch’s Hammered by the Irish. Contact harry.browne@gmail.com

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