Sony/BMG
**** (4 stars)

It’s about meat and potatoes. Sometimes you need meat and potatoes. Now Bruce, as good as he’s been over the past decade, has mostly been serving up green salads - aesthetic and healthy, often stripped down to the raw essentials … man, guitar and voice. But The Boss, it seems has finally realised you cannot live on vegies alone - or he’s just got plain bored with trying to ensure his place in the US Smithsonian music archives (he’s safe). With Magic, he’s performed some spectacular wand waving. It’s a good old old meat and potatoes album, in the mould of Born To Run - and let’s say here and now the title track of that particular road hog is one of the best 10 rock songs ever. Just wind down the windows and turn it up loud - which is what you should do with Magic. From the opening blast that’s Radio Nowhere through the Byrdsian You’ll be Coming Down and the beautifully crafted classic rock of Gypsy Biker, The Boss is back and firing up with his buddies - the big man on sax Clarence Clemons, Stevie Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg and the rest of the band. Magic indeed.

A well-cooked side of beef served with roast potatoes, pumpkin and lashings of gravy.