Rick Springfield

This is Russell Morris and Rick Springfield like you’ve never heard them before. They have come together to create Jack Chrome & The Darkness Waltz, an album that celebrates Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) with the narrator, Jack Chrome, leading the listener through a compelling song cycle about life and death.

Rick Springfield released the big, bold Songs for the End of the World in 2012, just before he received a boost in credibility from Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters leader featured Springfield in Sound City, his 2013 feature-length love letter to classic rock, and while its accompanying soundtrack wasn't a smash, it did help shift the conventional wisdom on Rick Springfield. Now, he was celebrated for his power pop and arena rock, two things that helped him land a plum role in Jonathan Demme's 2015 film Ricki and the Flash, where he played a puppy dog foil to Meryl Streep's aging lead. Springfield knocked his role out of the park, allowing himself to be vulnerable and funny, two qualities he sometimes avoids on record. Happily, Rocket Science – the 2016 album that is his first since the great Rick renaissance of the 2010s – finds the rocker acting looser than he's been in years, letting his gift for the frivolous sit alongside his yen to explore his spiritual side.

Orchestrating My Life is a clever title for an album where Rick Springfield revisits his catalog with the assistance of a 60-piece orchestra. It's a common move for veteran artist, but Springfield resists the easy impulse to make an easy listening record. Instead, he pumps Orchestrating My Life up with big, loud guitars that intentionally echo the arrangements of his original hit singles. Perhaps such a move was inevitable, as so many of his big hits – "I've Done Everything for You," "Don't Talk to Strangers," "Jessie's Girl," "Affair of the Heart," "Love Somebody," "Human Touch" – are melodic power pop fueled by massive hooks, the kind of album rock that needs its riffs as a support; remove the guitars and the whole edifice collapses.