I've bought every Bruce Springsteen album since Darkness the first day it was released so I'm not a newcomer to Bruce. This is a great collection of songs. Bruce says so much here musically and lyrically, but I have to agree with so many other people that the production is terrible. In listening to this cd a few times in my car I actually considered whether I needed better speakers; until I put in another cd which sounded perfectly fine. I listened to the album online last week through my cheap PC speakers. I loved it and was looking forward to listening to it in high fidelity. Apparently this will never happen unless a remastered version of this comes out many years from now. I find that this cd can not be turned way up without horrible distortion and it is actually tiring to listen to this for long periods of time. Great - a Springsteen cd that I can't crank up and listen to repeatedly. Contrast The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle (which was released a mere 34 years ago) with Magic and you'll find you're now waist deep in the Big Muddy.

Dear Mr. Bruce Springsteen,

Although this release is full of great material please remaster this album. The sound quality appears as if something produced during the 50's. The "wall of sound" without any separation is just exhausting after a while. I'm sure you and the E Street Band can't be pleased.

Sincerely,
A dedicated fan

I couldn't agree more with the last couple of reviews. When I listened to this cd the first time in my car I had to play it at home right away because I wasn't sure if it was my lousy car speakers or the music itself. From a sheer sound quality, the word muddy is a perfect fit, and from a musical quality, it seems really forced, both in lyrics and instrumentally. Many times too, it seems like they all thought they needed to be playing at the same time, which again, gave the overall sound a muddy quality. I am a huge Bruce fan and am very disappointed in this release. Do yourself a favor and listed to someone elses disc before you go spend your hard earned money on it.

I need to play this quite a few more times to judge the songs. On first listen, I've found some of the arrangements interesting, some songs catchy and some lyrics interesting. Overall OK given that I'm not a huge Bruuuuuuce fan. Eventually, I'd likely give it a 3 or perhaps 4 star rating based on content.

But.... The production and engineering of this CD is inexcusable. The sound is very compressed - WHY? It is also very muddy, often hard to discern the lyrics through the fog of sound. It's 2007; O'Brien should be embarrassed at a production this unlistenable - for a major artist no less, who should have access to the best facilities and technicians.

My Vandersteen speakers swallowed this CD up. Even the normally expansive Vandys couldn't overcome the compression of this recording.

Springsteen should insist that this be remastered or rerecorded; unbought copies of this be recalled; anyone who bought it be sent the remastered version if they send in proof-of-purchase.

How the label, artist, producer or engineer let this travesty see the light of day is inexplicable. It is 2007 isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, this is a very good album with great song writing but I have to agree with others who have complained about the sound quality of the album. At first I thought I had screwed up the settings on my ipod but after I played the songs on my stereo with the same results, I was really disappointed. It's really a shame because with a good sound mixing job I think this would've been a truly great album. As it is now, I can barely listen to it without getting a headache.

All those great riffs and lyrics get buried in an avalanche of noise. I can only guess that this was done on purpose for some reason. I guess it does make the album seem more nostalgic but it comes at the cost of making the album painful to listen to.

My favorite song on the album is "Girls in their summer clothes." Like Bruce, I often look back on lost youth and yearn for those days again.