When Tracks, Bruce Springsteen’s 1998 box set of previously unreleased recordings from the prior 25 years, finally saw the light of day, it felt like a peek behind the curtain. It was a musical document of how a great musician (and Rock Star™, in a very intentional manner), had crafted the arc of his output and his career—a “how the sausage gets made” glimpse of the ways Springsteen honed his songs and sound to fit what he consciously thought of as an evolving portrait of himself as an artist on a musical and cultural journey. It revealed the work he was doing behind the scenes of the iconic albums that the public heard and turned, by and large, into massive critical and commercial successes. (Give or take a Human Touch/Lucky Town.)
Tracks II: The Lost Albums is a far different beast. These aren’t just another set of odds and musical ends cast off en route to the finished version of his discography. By and large, these are complete recordings—albums that were recorded, mixed, and meant to stand alone as their own releases, but were, for one reason or another, sidelined by the Boss. Sometimes it was because he found himself more intrigued by a new musical path he had started down in the interim, sometimes it was due to outside forces delaying the release, and sometimes, he just felt like it wasn’t the right time to put them out. So into the vault they went, gathering dust and creating rumors about what treasures he may have hidden away from curious eyes and ears. (If you were a Springsteen superfan any time in the past 25 years, at some point or another, someone likely whispered to you about the existence of an entire “drum loops” album—and yes, it’s here.)
Unlike the first Tracks, these albums are decidedly distinct from one another—and even more notably, distinct from the public Bruce Springsteen we’ve heard all these years. Yes, he’s always had elements of country, soul, pop standards, and other genres in his classic rock n’ roll/rhythm & blues sound, but now those styles have each gotten their own complete Springsteen album. There’s a collection of stripped-down border tales inspired by Mexican folk music and history; a set of singer-songwriter-esque American standards; a raucous country-western record; that much-rumored drum loops album from the mid-’90s, and more. Obviously, at the end of the day, it’s still Springsteen, and he can only stretch so far before returning back to the themes and arrangements that have driven so much of his music. Yet it’s striking the degree to which these albums possess their own personalities, even as musical stamps and styles—including word-for-word lyrical couplets cut and pasted into different songs, revealing an artist restlessly searching for the right sonic container to hold his imagery and emotions—retain his signature flavor.
Those sonic frameworks begin with arguably the most anticipated of these albums: The LA Garage Sessions ’83, more or less the missing link between the stripped-down purity of Nebraska and the more-is-more bombast of Born In The U.S.A., and it paints a picture of an artist more comfortable as a solo act. With his new studio setup, Bruce plays all the instruments, save for the occasional drum programming aided by engineer Mike Batlan. And, aside from versions of Born In The U.S.A. single B-sides “Shut Out The Light” and “Johnny Bye-Bye”—as well as The Essential Bruce Springsteen bonus track “Sugarland”—they’re all tracks that have either been only heard live or not at all.
It’s also the most sprawling, with 18 songs running the musical gamut from minimalist ballad to retro-rock eruptions. The most immediately appealing are numbers like opener “Follow That Dream,” acoustic anthem “Sugarland,” or “Fugitive’s Dream” which plays like an exercise in perpetual tension, a Nebraska-esque track wedded to a “Rawhide”-style bassline for a tale of an outlaw who can’t outrun his past. Many of the simpler, slower tracks evoking that earlier record work best, while the retro rock n’ roll numbers can’t quite capture that Springsteen magic. Most are of the standard “Come back, baby” pop messaging, but they’re also quite reductive, generically upbeat, and unimaginative in composition. It’s a compressed nostalgia often found in rock n’ roll, but it plays here like Springsteen knows he’s better than this. (Especially lyrically: “One Love” contains hoary couplets like “Yeah, come on baby, rock me way down low / Shake me darling, Shake me, don’t let me go.”) If he’s trying to recapture the sounds of his youth, it lacks urgency.
Unexpectedly, it’s one of the more un-Boss-like experiments—that fabled drum loops album—where his passion burns brightest. Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions was borne from Springsteen’s interest in West Coast hip-hop and the looped drum beats found therein. In an unlikely affinity, he sounds as vital and emotionally intense here as on Tunnel Of Love, the other “dark relationship” record crafted without the aid of the E Street Band. (Other than wife Patti Scialfa and future touring violinist Soozie Tyrell, there’s just a handful of session players backing him in the studio here.) Indeed, there’s a remarkable coherence to the overall album, whose tracks mostly follow the same blueprint: funky drum loops surprisingly paired with mournful walls of synth, creating a mood both somber and driving. This vibe carries through the album, save for the minimal balladry of “Something In The Well” and “The Little Things,” and the backing of his Human Touch session players on the stately thumper “Waiting On The End Of The World.” (With a transcendent moment of distorted musical catharsis at the end, it makes one long to hear the E Street Version, still locked away in the vault. Maybe that’s for Volume 3.) There’s even a mid-tempo rocker, “One Beautiful Morning,” actually led by a guitar riff instead of drum loops and synths, that eventually reveals itself to be about death. It’s uplifting music counterbalancing the melancholy, the way so much of his best work does.
Faithless is another unique album in Tracks II. Commissioned for a film—a “spiritual Western” that never got made—it was recorded following the conclusion of the Devils & Dust tour in late 2005. Opening with an instrumental (two more provide an intermission and a bookend) that sounds like Angelo Badalamenti going West, the following 10 tracks cover a range of folksy Americana, from banjo- and pedal steel-aided sing-alongs to hushed, plaintive ballads where his voice barely rises above a whisper, to Neil Young-like harmonica and acoustic guitar workouts. They’re mostly sparse and low-key, and they mostly work. The track that most stands out is “All God’s Children,” a thumping, hollering, church-revival hoedown that features Bruce in full Jersey Devil mode, shouting a rough, ragged cry: “Glory, Hallelujah!” The whole thing plays to his strengths: wanderlust, wonder, and passion in the remote parts of the country, with hinted eruptions of sadness, violence, and lust, and tinged with hope and regret.
For those looking for the Boss in a more playful mood, there’s Somewhere North Of Nashville. Written and recorded simultaneously with The Ghost Of Tom Joad, he eventually realized he was creating two very different moods, and split the albums accordingly. (“I ended up making a country record on the side [of Tom Joad],” he says in the liner notes.) Shuffling gentle grooves and pedal steel-driven tales of love and infidelity alternate with a series of rousing, honky-tonk workouts, like Saturday night in a particular disreputable Southern dancehall from decades prior. These are exuberant, raucous numbers meant to be played loud, recorded live in studio with minimal fussiness—a rare exception to Springsteen’s usual painstaking process, but one that tends to offer up the best results (see: Letter To You). There are even numbers that feel like great E Street Band outtakes: “Under A Big Sky” and “Silver Mountain” fit this description, as does “Stand On It,” a barnburner that could’ve been plunked square in the middle of The River, were it not for the country-flourish instrumentation. “If you’ve lost control of the situation at hand / grab a girl, go see a rock n’ roll band”—it’s basically “Roll Over Beethoven” with a pedal steel.
Inyo carries on this tradition, but shifts the compositional action from smoky pool halls and sock hops to places closer to the border, and a little less hopeful. Drawing on the history of Mexican history, folklore, and music, it might be the most uneven of these lost albums. For every high—and there are a few of them—there are multiple tracks in which Springsteen chooses to incorporate a full mariachi band into the mix, and the results are less than stellar. Artists trying to stretch well outside their comfort zones can be an admirable thing; it can also be a mistake to confuse ambition with success. It’s a bit too earnest, coming across like a well-meaning artist doing musical cosplay. Faring far better are the sparse, stripped-down shuffles and country-blues ballads, with elegiac melodies and tense, pained lyricism. Check out “One False Move” to hear when it works—and “The Lost Charro” for when it doesn’t.
Speaking of things not working: In 2010, Springsteen started recording material that he would return to periodically throughout the rest of the decade, before finally releasing it as Western Stars in 2019. Whatever you think of that album should give you a decent sense of how you’ll receive Twilight Hours, only with even more of a singer-songwriter, ’60s easy-listening vibe. From the opening notes of leadoff track “Sunday Love,” we’re in straight-up Burt Bacharach territory. Springsteen name-checks him in the accompanying essay, for the obvious reason that, if he didn’t, everyone else would be calling it out. The hammy orchestral synths, the tinkling piano keys, predictable vocal melodies, adult-contemporary arrangements—even his voice is modulated to a genteel baritone, stripped of its usual charismatic grain. Close your eyes, and you’d be forgiven for thinking “September Kisses” is just a clunky Roy Orbison cover. It’s not without its pleasures, but they are few and far between. By the time he’s literally rolling out vocal “bum bum BUMMM” lines in penultimate track “Dinner At Eight,” you’ll either be thrilling to an artist so far afield from his usual M.O., or you’ll be thinking the end can’t come soon enough.
Perfect World is the outlier in Tracks II, a collection of various and stylistically sundry tracks that he’s held onto all these years, unburdened by affiliation with a planned project. Springsteen selected them for reasons known only to him, though the results suggest a desire to put something together for this collection that finally, without reservation or modification, just sounds like a goddamn Bruce Springsteen record. Right out of the gate, opener “I’m Not Sleeping” kicks like a latter-day rocker from the Boss, as though it leapt fully formed from the middle of the sessions for Magic. From there, it’s a musical tour through the past 25 years: The Devils & Dust dirty-rock vibe of “Idiot’s Delight,” the Wrecking Ball roil of “The Great Depression,” the thundering anthem of “Rain In The River”; they all work, and feel of a piece.
There are even songs nodding to influences both overt and not. “If I Could Only Be Your Lover” is a half-step away from being a recent Pearl Jam number; “Cutting Knife” has the folksy thrum of Big Thief; “You Lifted Me Up” is the Boss’ version of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”—repeating just a few lines until they achieve a kind of meditative glory. And the title track closes things out with a lovely, mournful elegy for what’s gone, not a bad cap for a collection of seven unreleased albums’ worth of experiments, exercises, castoffs, and almost-weres. With reflection, you can see why Springsteen felt the time was right to release these. He’s obviously getting close to the twilight years, and concerned with the legacy he’s leaving behind, both musical and otherwise. These albums paint a new picture of an artist many thought had spent the years away from E Street wandering without inspiration, and show new sides to him that have never been fully rendered in his official releases. That comes with the good and the bad—though, as he notes in his autobiography, one necessitates the other. In this case, it’s music that deepens our understanding of an artist both oddly forthright and deeply withholding at the same time. Bruce Springsteen is nothing if not a man who, regardless of what is kept close to the vest, wants to leave you feeling like he carved out his heart and deposited it, warts and all, for your assessment. Take it or leave it, you can’t say he didn’t give it his all.
