CD Reviews

LES SAVY FAV & r & Let's Stay Friends & r & 3 Stars & r & & r & The long-overdue return of Brooklyn's hippest art-rockers is both a cause for joy and sorrow. Joy lies in the tunes, typical fare from Tim Harrington and his band of merry rock-pranksters. "The Year Before the Year 2000" best encapsulates this notion. A driving guitar-and-drum number full of shrieking feedback and bullhorn-style vocals, the song meanders through its soft-loud structures as a means of reaching its intellectual climax: "1999's all right." Similar gems permeate the lot.





The sorrow over Les Savy's reappearance derives from this collection's less spontaneous, less whimsical, less confrontational, and less important sound. Perhaps that comes from taking six years away from recording full-length albums. A certain raucousness is missing. It's desperately missed.





If the album title subtly acknowledges that the times they are a-changin', the 12 tracks here go a long way to mending any previous ruptures.





-- CAREY MURPHY





DOWNLOAD: "Patty Lee"





BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN


Magic


4 Stars





Bruce Springsteen has been the bard of the broken American Dream for 30 years, and George W. Bush is giving him more material than ever. How do you channel all the anger without making the music ... different? Great artists slip their message under your skin without your really knowing it, and the Boss is truly great this time out.





On Magic, he has dialed back the earnestness.





With four-minute songs in a wall of sound, the politics go down easier. In a song like "Last To Die," first you just want to drive too fast on an open road; the lyrics hit you afterward. That's a powerful one-two punch. But "Gypsy Biker" -- which starts with the line, "The speculators made their money" -- misses the mark because it wants to pound the rage into you.





Bruce Springsteen is more than a rock star, and Magic is more than a record. This is the art of hope.





-- TED S. McGREGOR JR.





DOWNLOAD: "Last To Die"