Bruce Springsteen albums are most often well-constructed, cohesive statements, but "High Hopes" is something different - a collection of covers and leftovers from the last decade or so. As such, it feels like a musical tag sale, albeit one in a very nice ...

What actually is anomalous about “High Hopes” is the fact that it includes three cover songs, even going so far as to begin and end with songs not written by Springsteen, and taking its album tile from one of them. No matter – all three of these covers sound like songs Springsteen could’ve written himself, both harmonically and in terms of their poetic-populist lyrics.