Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 08/05/06
Label: Columbia

To rock'n'rollers of a certain age, Pete Seeger will always be viewed as the apoplectic Luddite who tried to pull the plug on Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when the mighty Zimmerman elected to go electric. The stories of his reaction are legion and mainly apocryphal but this is to do a disservice to the legendary folk singer, for Seeger can perhaps be mentioned in the same hushed tones reserved for the likes of Elvis and The Beatles. Like them, Seeger was an innovator, an artist who ran with an existing art form to create something new.

In Seeger's case, it was the addition of social consciousness that elevated his work to something more than mere storytelling and as his political views focussed, Seeger's support of workers and unions became increasingly vocal. In this context, it's entirely appropriate that the Garden State's poet laureate Bruce Springsteen should tackle 13 songs popularised by his spiritual forebear. A symbol of blue collar America, Springsteen has long championed the causes of the underdog but anyone expecting an exercise in chin stroking reverence is in for one hell of a surprise.

As the plucked banjo gives way to Springsteen's rollicking new eleven-piece band on opener "Old Dan Tucker", it's obvious that we're a million miles away from the Boss' usual constituency. We have horns, accordions, acoustic guitars, a stand up bass, fiddles and a whole lotta fun; mixing zydeco with New Orleans jazz and Cajun with folk, Springsteen sounds like he's having a ball and by the end of the song, so will you.

The fun continues with "Jesse James", but already you can hear the social conscience creeping in; presented as a Robin Hood-type character, Seeger's James fights oppression through a policy of self-appointed wealth distribution (aka robbing trains) but things turn serious with "Mrs McGrath" wherein a crippled soldier returns home from war into the arms of his distraught mother; the setting may be the American Civil War but its resonance still reverberates to this day. Likewise the work songs "John Henry" and "Eyes On The Prize", while "My Oklahoma Home" simultaneously evokes the ghost of Tom Joad whilst sounding utterly contemporary.

Strangely, Springsteen shifts down a gear for the title track. One of the most potent protest songs ever written, it deserves a defiance and gusto to match its resolve yet here, he approaches it with a sense of over-reverence that ultimately saps it of its power. However, this one miss amongst a slew of hits. Rambunctious and packed with a lust for life, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Seesions" is not only Springsteen's rowdiest set in years, it's the one that seems likely to win him a whole new audience.

    by James Marshall