VIDEO REVIEW : Springsteen’s Warm ‘Human Touch’

If anyone has doubts that Bruce Springsteen’s two new albums (due March 31) will be warmer affairs than their dour 1987 predecessor, his new “Human Touch” video should dispel them.

In what seems like the equivalent of a thumbs-up sign, the video clip (which premiered Monday on MTV) ends with the Boss-man smiling at the camera.

If Springsteen is happy again, can economic recovery be far behind?

Director Meiert Avis’ narrative provides an expressionist trolley car ride through the lonesome streets of New Orleans as Springsteen heads home to his babe. Strobe-lighted street scenes of hookers and punks turn into religious rites--weddings, funerals, circumcisions and the like--during the first of two typically fevered guitar solos.

Having dispensed with cultural connections, the video gets down, inevitably, to the literal touch, with a demure (by MTV standards) skin-on-skin interlude, intercut with a shirtless Springsteen playing windmill guitar.

“Girl, ain’t no kindness in the faces of strangers . . . I just want someone to taa -aalk to,” he sings, a country-style catch in his voice--but, of course, Springsteen does more than just talk when he gets back to that gal.

In a nice touch, Avis lets a long shot of Springsteen walking up the hallway go during a pre-coda drum interlude, then, once the door opens, flashy editing resumes, in a sexy sequence that could just as well be a video for the old favorite, “Candy’s Room.”