Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 5: High Hopes, by Bruce Springsteen.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I won't try to make a case for High Hopes being in the upper echelon of Bruce Springsteen's canon.

The album is an instance of adaptive reuse in music, as The Boss combines various aggregations of the E Street Band -- including two deceased members -- to refashion various songs from the past decade. A few well-selected covers (including the Suicides, above) season the mix, and the result is perhaps surprisingly effective as a coherent collection of songs, which update Springsteen's sound and remain topical.

Two familiar Springsteen epics, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "American Skin (41 Shots)," do far more than provide familiar touchstones; they also deploy E Street fellow traveler guitarist Tom Morello to purely lethal effect, while largely summarizing the year that unfolded following the album's January release: The corrosive effects of income inequality and violence borne of racism.

Significantly for me, High Hopes plays like an album even if it is composed of spare parts. There is pacing, modulation and dramatic flow. The listener is engaged by the artist's songs as positioned together, and if this fatally dates me, I understand and will remain unreconstructed, eschewing "shuffle."

Kitty Empire's review at The Guardian hits the high points of High Hopes.

Last spring, Morello replaced bandana-toting E Street guitarist Steve Van Zandt on the Australian leg of Springsteen's Wrecking Ball world tour. He ended up resetting the co-ordinates on the album of loose ends that Springsteen had been planning. Morello suggested revisiting High Hopes, previously covered by Springsteen. He dug out another tune Springsteen knew by the Saints, an Australian punk band.

From there, it was a natural rollick to a local studio to record those, plus the rebooted, electrified Ghost of Tom Joad with all 18 members of the 2013 touring E Street Band, plus Morello, in full effect. All in all, Morello plays some role on eight of the 12 High Hopes cuts, which span covers, re-recordings, vault numbers and previously unheard tracks. That's Morello, making "squeep" noises on the title track, previously an EP obscurity, now a major soul-rock workout about hope in hard times.

The keynote address here is clearly Tom Joad, no longer a ghost of a song, but a fully fleshed beast on which Springsteen and Morello swap both guitar parts and sung verses ...

Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin (41 Shots)."

Musically, the year 2014 has started slowly. It isn't unusual.

Historically, in January there is a tendency for me to delve into classical and jazz, and so it has been again this year; high points to date include a Louisville Orchestra performance (and a forthcoming Kentucky Center Chamber Players gig at U of L on Super Bowl Sunday) as well as a happenstance reconsideration of trumpeter Sonny Berman. The pop/rock realm usually waits until February, and may have something to do with my need to be charged properly for Gravity Head's onslaught.

Bruce Springsteen's new album, High Hopes, is a hodge-podge collection of newly recorded covers, unreleased material and older songs freshly re-imagined. What makes it most interesting is the presence of guitarist Tom Morello, formerly of Rage Against the Machine. A generation removed from the Boss, Morello also inhabits political terrain to the left of his elder. The result isn't Jay-Z, but then again, this is my blog, and I wouldn't know a Jay-Z song if I tripped over it on the street.

The Springsteen-Morello partnership works quite well on an electrified "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (originally recorded acoustically in 1995), and the venerable "American Skin (41 Shots)." The latter originally was penned by Springsteen to address the shooting death of Amadou Diallo by New York City police in 1999. Several versions were released, and then it returned to the stage set following the killing of Trayvon Martin.

It's far too early to tell whether High Hopes will rank among my most-listened-to releases of 2014. Still, there is something undeniably comforting to me about Bruce Springsteen's unflagging work ethic. In a nation filled with angry white guys, it's actually possible to be angry for the "left" reason.