Western Stars:The perfect soundtrack in lockdown

I stood on the roof of the World Trade Centre just three weeks before it came down and soaked up its magnificent views. The soundtrack in my head was Springsteen's New York City Serenade.

He's always told stories and created characters, but he also paints compelling landscapes.

Western Stars brings all three elements together. I guess that's why it has been on my playlist every single day of lockdown - it's an album to set the spirits alight,one packed with songs to brighten  the longest of  empty days.

And at its heart as those magnificent, glorious, life-affirming strings. They soar across this album,  swooping down on choruses, and picking up the narrative and carrying it to the next stage.

Western Stars has been labelled his 'cowboy album' but it's much more than that. 

It captures a landscape as well as  characters, and paints his most vivid pictures since those early epics of  Jungleland and New York City Serenade.

Like his characters who went racing in the streets and bragged their dads each owned one of the World Trade Centres, Springsteen has got old.

The songs reflect on lives lived -  loss, regret at the passing of people and places such as the  Moonlight Hotel,  and accepting the sands of time are starting to trickle through your hands without ever spilling into melancholy.

Springsteen still finds moments to celebrate and cherish; the showman in him still hankers for that sense of belonging, surrounded by the people he loves - a quality which imbues so many of his epic live shows.

Sleepy Joe's Cafe may well echo the place where every body knows your name that we heard in Mary's Place on The Rising - territory he has mined across his career - but darn it, he makes it sound so good, you find yourself Googling to see if you can reserve a table.

Maybe there, you'll also recognise the people at the heart of his songs.

The Stuntman ruminating on the injuries and the thrill which came with his lack of fear of "the wall" in Drive Fast, Fall Hard,  and the C-list actor from the title track reduced to credit card commercials, and still retelling the story of the scene in which John Wayne shot him, but only if the bartender sets 'em up .

Who knows, maybe it's an easy walk from Sleepy Joe's to  Moonlight Hotel which draws the album to a close with such poignancy as he raises a glass of Jack to a once special place now boarded up and abandoned.

But he never does depart the stage on a solemn note, and so, Western Stars concludes perhaps the only way it could with a cover of the ultimate cowboy song - Glenn Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy. It's utterly joyful.

The more I listen to Western Stars, the more I can only wonder why on earth he didn't take to the road with an orchestra.

The film of them performing live in his barn was utterly captivating. You could see how much they loved it - since when did an orchestra ever smile so much mid-performance?

 If only we could have seen it live on a glorious summer's night....