Okay, initial thoughts are going to be quite vague because I’ll need another few listens to pick out highlights - the album is too long for something that’s lacking in great moments, that’s the first issue. Only The River has been a longer album so far, and that justifies it far more than this.
Human Touch (the song) pretty much picks up where Tunnel of Love left off, and is a good start - a little sanitised, but a good song. Then a lot of the guitar driven almost-rockers are pleasant enough songs, but they’re landing squarely in a kind of Mark Knopfler, Mike & the Mechanics, dadrock, MOR place. There’s nothing jumping out as too exciting, and while Bruce is on good form vocally, he doesn’t sound too excited either.
Not entirely sure what Real Man was (I looked it up and it’s been performed 12 times, none since '92, which for a guy who performs as many 3+ hour concerts as Bruce does isn’t a ringing endorsement), then Pony Boy is a classic example of “new father records nursery rhyme for newborn child, and for some reason assumes others will want to hear it too”.
Will listen more and pick out some higher points through the week, but if I’d been a reviewer at the time I would almost certainly have used the line “can’t start a fire without a spark” at some point.
