Reviews
Ranked #29 in Rolling Stone's "The Top 50 Albums Of 2006" -- "These big-band treatments combine Dixieland brass, cantina accordions and barn-dance fiddles...", 4 stars out of 5 -- "It takes easily five seconds to discover this is a Springsteen as you've never heard him before....A big band of little-knowns tumbles and jumbles diverse folk idioms all around him...", "The album deftly balances such deeply spiritual forays with a lot of upbeat material....Bringing a deep personal connection to some of the most quintessentially American songs ever written.", 4 stars out of 5 -- "With his first-ever album of songs written by other people, it feels like he's turned to the music of our shared past to find a moral compass for a nation that's gone off the rails.", "Enlivened by flailing banjos, tub-thumping horns, and hopped up accordions....He isn't afraid to mix in some merriment with the message." -- Grade: A-, Ranked #16 in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums of 2006" -- "It proved to be a rip-roaring, ramshackle masterstroke.", 3 stars out of 5 -- "It's good to hear Springsteen with the pressure off, tapping deep into the bedrock of American music and singing and playing for the sheer joy of it."