Bruce Springstreen has announced his new album title: Wrecking Ball, an angry-sounding name fitting for what The Hollywood Reporter learned will be his “angriest” offering yet.
The record, scheduled to drop March 6 through Columbia Records, was produced by Springsteen and Ron Aniello (Lifehouse, Jars of Clay); Jon Landau, the singer’s manager, also is on board as executive producer. It’s the first time working on a Springsteen record for Aniello, who co-produced Play It as It Lays, the 2007 album by the singer’s wife, Patti Scialfa.
The track list for the album, recorded with the E Street Band:
1. We Take Care of Our Own
2. Easy Money
3. Shackled and Drawn
4. Jack of All Trades
5. Death to My Hometown
6. This Depression
7. Wrecking Ball
8. You’ve Got It
9. Rocky Ground
10. Land of Hope and Dreams
11. We Are Alive
The bonus tracks are “Swallowed Up” and “American Land”; the latter and “Land of Hope and Dreams” are Springsteen concert staples appearing for the first time on a studio album.
Last week, an earwitness who’s heard Wrecking Ball told THR that Springstreen takes on a darker, edgier tone.
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“He gets into economic justice quite a bit,” the source said. “It’s very rock ’n’ roll. He feels it’s the angriest album he’s ever made. Bear in mind, though, that [Springsteen] wrote and recorded the majority of the album before the Occupy movements started, so he’s not just setting headlines to music.”
Springsteen is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the music conference portion of South by Southwest on March 15 in Austin, coinciding with the album’s release. The boss and the E Street Band, which has lost two longtime members in recent years — Danny Federici in 2008 and legendary saxophonist Clarence Clemons in 2011 — have a round of U.K. concert dates set for June as part of a 2012 tour of Europe and the U.S.
