ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Bruce Springsteen � High Hopes (Columbia): A mess, as you've heard, with all the subtlety of a Kanye interview, thus also pretty fun. Every which way there's old songs, covers, alternate versions, dusted off and lacquered up with orchestras, hair-metal dynamics, trumpets, bagpipes, and crassest of all, E Street new blood Tom Morello, who adds three minutes and a faux turntable solo to "The Ghost of Tom Joad." I'll take the slowcore '94 version, not to mention "Hunter of Invisible Game," the stringy 90s Dylan-90s Zevon m�lange that precedes it here. "Down in the Hole" is the most shambolic offender here, with a pretty, well-plucked tune that can't decide if it's a slow one or a double-time ticktocker like "I'm on Fire," which you can sing over it. It's followed by "Heaven's Wall," which breaks from a Latin percussion-cum-Justin Timberlake intro and an insistent choir into "Orange Crush"-style bowed rock.

Better are the occasionally gorgeous mutterings of "The Wall," echoing like a ballad off Tom Waits' Bone Machine, and the Stones-y "Frankie Fell in Love." Except for Bruce Springsteen's well-timed feedback screeches in the tumbling Gypsy punk title track, Morello's overchucked solos mostly embarrass, though the incredible "American Skin (41 Shots)" remains unassailable even with full-on Achtung Baby production, and still depressingly necessary in the wake of Trayvon Martin. Again, a mess. But there's not a bad song in the outrageously-produced bunch. And the grandpa-funk of "Harry's Place" has something to teach Arcade Fire.

Rosanne Cash � The River and the Thread (Blue Note): One of the 80s' most distinctive and easygoing "country" stars, you'd think she'd hire Haim to reunite her with those gated studio effects. Instead she follows two albums that mourned her famous parents seven years ago by venturing back down from Manhattan for some of her most plainspoken, organic new originals. Unlike Springsteen, Rosanne Cash wields a string section with effective delicacy on "A Feather's Not a Bird" and employs shrewd na-na-nas for the catchy "Modern Blue," and all over the place turns in some of her sharpest songwriting ever. Her highest highs might have never scratched the legacy of, oh, timely reissuer Lucinda Williams, but Cash sure makes it look so much easier.