DVD BLURAY & TV

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN WESTERN STARS

WARNER BROS HOME ENTERTAINMENT

8/10

THIS film is what Bruce Springsteen did instead of touring with his fine 2019 album, Western Stars. In April last year, he assembled a band, backing vocalists and a 30-piece orchestra in the century-old barn on his farm in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Over two nights, this ensemble performed the 13 tracks from Western Stars, and one cover version.

is mostly a perfectly decent concert film, but it’s a deal more than that. Between each song are brief cinematic vignettes, co-directed by Springsteen, which combine sequences shot beneath the vast skies overhanging the Joshua Tree National Park in California with archive footage of Springsteen, and scenes from his life. They are narrated by Springsteen, ruminating to camera or in voiceover upon the songs on , what inspired them, and what they have inspired. These wry and terse reflections are thoughtful, deftly written, and reined in well short of pomposity by his time-served self-deprecating deadpan (“Cars,” Springsteen sighs, early on. “This is