In November, Bruce Springsteen announced he will release his 18th studio album, called, High Hopes on January 14th. The collection -- which includes production duties by Springsteen, Ron Aniello, and Brendan O'Brien -- prominently features Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and breaks tradition for a Springsteen set, including re-recordings of older, previously released tunes, new material, and most notably, three cover songs. With some of the material stretching back several years, the album features tracks including late E Street Band members organist Danny Federici and saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

Springsteen posted his liner notes to the album on his website (BruceSpringsteen.net), which read in part: "I was working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade when Tom Morello (sitting in for Steve (Van Zandt)) during the Australian leg of our tour) suggested we ought to add 'High Hopes' to our live set. I had cut 'High Hopes,' a song by Tim Scott McConnell of the L.A. based Havalinas, in the '90s. We worked it up in our Aussie rehearsals and Tom then proceeded to burn the house down with it. We re-cut it mid tour at Studios 301 in Sydney along with 'Just Like Fire Would,' a song from one of my favorite early Australian punk bands, the Saints (check out 'I'm Stranded'). Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level. Thanks for the inspiration Tom.”

He went on to post: "This is music I always felt needed to be released. From the gangsters of 'Harry’s Place,' the ill-prepared roomies on 'Frankie Fell In Love' (shades of Steve and I bumming together in our Asbury Park apartment) the travelers in the wasteland of 'Hunter Of Invisible Game,' to the soldier and his visiting friend in 'The Wall,' I felt they all deserved a home and a hearing.”

Steve Van Zandt told us that Bruce Springsteen's recent work isn't that far away from what first attracted him to his earliest songs: "Well, he's still writing at a very high level of quality and that's always inspiring to me. Sometimes it maybe a little more politically slanted or socially slanted than romantically or emotionally slanted -- but, y'know, I don't really judge that way. You go onstage with the script that you have and you do that as well as you can possibly do it. Y'know, that's all I know."