A
lot of Spring code predates the rising popularity of "convention over configuration" (thank you, Rails, for getting this so widely accepted), so if you're in one of those code bases, you're going to see a
LOT of the Java+XML verbosity that led to everyone lampooning Java.
In exchange, you get a ton of flexibility. You probably only need 5-10% of it, but that 5-10% is NICE. The ability to do clean testing of your data tier, for instance, is glorious when you first experience it. Goodbye, horrible ResultSet mocks!
If you're lucky enough to work on a codebase that fully embraces autowiring and all the spiffy new annotations, then you get all this awesome stuff, but with virtually none of the crazy XML configuration stuff that makes it impossible to just trace the source and figure out what the hell is going on.
For Java web frameworks, Play! http://www.playframework.org/ is definitely on the top of my list for green-field projects. I've only used it on small things so far, but it really seems to have learned the lessons of Django and Rails.
https://github.com/weavejester/compojure is on my To-Try list for Clojure stuff. Until I get around to it, I'm just monitoring buzz on the web, but so far it's been mostly positive.