Bruce Springsteen working on 'solo project' without his E Street Band



Bruce Springsteen has announced that he's working on a new album, what he describes as "more of a solo project" than his recent releases.

Springsteen released his latest album 'High Hopes' in 2014. Like most of his output, it featured regular backing band the E Street Band. His last release without the band came in 2005 with 'Devils & Dust'.

He confirmed the news in a recent interview with SiriusXM’s E Street Radio. Listen in full above.

Bruce Springsteen Set to Release ‘Very Different’ Solo Album

According to manager Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen is preparing to release “a very different kind of record” as his next solo project. No release date has been announced for what would be Springsteen’s 19th studio effort.

Speaking to Billboard, Landau explains that his longtime client will follow up his highly successful world tour in support of last year’s expanded reissue of the 1980 album The River by releasing the as-yet unnamed project. “It’s a wonderful record,” he promised. “And we’ll see how the next year unfolds. … We just have a knack for not planning that far ahead. That’s our way.”

One thing Landau does make clear is that the apparent absence of the E Street Band doesn’t mean the new record will be a stripped-down affair along the lines of 1982’s Nebraska, 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad and 2005’s Devils & Dust. “I’m not talking about an acoustic record,” he said. “It is, in fact, a very expansive record, a very rich record. It’s one of Bruce’s best creative efforts.”

“It’s a solo record, more of a singer-songwriter kind of record,” he said. Intriguingly, though, it does not follow in the spare, acoustic tradition of such previous solo albums as Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Devils & Dust. Rather, it’s inspired by a recent immersion in the 60s collaborations of the songwriter Jimmy Webb and the singer Glen Campbell, “pop records with a lot of strings and instrumentation,” he said. “So the record is somewhat in that vein.” That’s as much as he’ll reveal at the moment.

More hints about the new album from a Vanity Fair interview:


The full interview, mostly to do with Springsteen's autobiography, is posted here:

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I know others may feel differently, but I largely found those three albums to be depressing slogs. I'd be happy to get something more upbeat, maybe more in the style of "Greetings" even.

Bruce Springsteen Outlines New Solo Album

Bruce Springsteen is finally preparing to release the solo album he’s kept under wraps for several years.

He noted that while the new material has connections to the rest of his solo work, fans will find that it feels very different. He wrote the songs around the time he created 2012’s Wrecking Ball, but other work distracted him from finishing the album.

“I’ve just been caught up in other projects,” Springsteen told Variety. “It’s kind of waiting for its moment. Good music doesn’t go away.” Asked about the rumor that it sounded like something Aaron Copland would write, he replied: “I don’t know if anybody made that particular connection. Really, that record is influenced by Southern California pop music of the ‘70s. Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach – those kinds of records.”

Still, Springsteen added, “I don’t know if people will hear those influences, but that was what I had in my mind. It gave me something to hook an album around. It gave me some inspiration to write. It’s a singer-songwriter record, connected to my solo records writing-wise, more Tunnel of Love and Devils and Dust; but it’s not like them at all. Just different characters living their lives.”

He said he hadn’t written any new material for some time, noting, “If I have some songs that I haven’t released, once they’re released, hen the machine starts turning for, ‘Okay, now I’m going to write for the band’ or whatever I come up with.”

Springsteen said he wrote most of the new record before Wrecking Ball, but that he stopped work on it to make that 2012 album instead. Since then, he’s not written much. “But that’s not unusual,” he said. “That’s occurred plenty of other times in my working life.” Springsteen’s last album was 2014’s High Hopes, which reworked some earlier material.

He also revealed that he has touring and recording plans in store for the near future, and that fans will be able to see him hit the road with the E Street Band soon.

He joked to the Sunday Times that he'll be "back to his day job" soon, and that new material will likely make its way to his set list. He confirmed that he's been working on new music, but that it's closer to Springsteen on Broadway in approach and aesthetic than his typical studio albums.

“For lack of a better word, it’s a singer-songwriter album," he said of the upcoming release, his first since 2014's High Hopes. "More of a solo record.”

Judgin' by his song titlin', looks like Springsteen's gettin' back to usin' apostrophes when he's singin' gerunds.