Bruce Springsteen’s 83-song ‘Lost Albums’ is the greatest musical treasure trove of all time
There isn’t a single dud in this enormous, richly compelling box set, which completely rewrites the Boss’s already unparalleled career
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This is surely the greatest box set of all time. It is what box sets were invented for, an alternative history of one of the great musical artists of our age that is every bit as compelling as his actual history.
Bruce Springsteen, Tracks II: The Lost Albums features seven unreleased albums written and recorded between 1983 and 2018, including 83 original songs, only nine of which have been heard before (and seven of those in completely different versions). These are not sketches, demos or drafts. They are complete albums, finished to the last detail.
It is awe-inspiring to contemplate, like stumbling across a buried treasure trove of one of the greatest talents in his field, created at the peak of his powers, then put aside for mysterious reasons, locked away and forgotten. Or almost. As Springsteen has said of his prolific songwriting, when a song doesn’t fit his plans, “I put them away, but I don’t throw them away.”
Tracks II is a companion to 1998’s Tracks, a compilation of 66 out-takes and leftovers from 1972 and 1995. But that pales beside what Springsteen has accomplished here. The great singer-songwriter spent the pandemic going through his personal archives, completing albums that in some cases only he knew even existed.
Now, 83 songs is a lot of music for even the most ardent fan to consume in one gulp. It is a testament to the lofty level at which Springsteen operates that this stuff is genuinely good. There’s not a single sloppy demo or half-hearted throwaway among them. Which is not to suggest it is better than his official discography of 11 studio albums released during the same period. It is just different – the work of an artist exploring alternative possibilities. “Many of these records were done on a whim,” he writes in the copious liner notes, “experimenting with genres out of my wheelhouse.”
Among the revelations here are: a lush, noirish orchestral album in a Burt Bacharach vein (Twilight Hours); a moody soundtrack to a spiritual western (Faithless); a sombre Tex-Mex record about the South American diaspora (Inyo); and an atmospheric trip-hop album of brooding broken love songs (The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions). Exploring the loops and synths of Springsteen’s Oscar-winning theme song to the film of the same name, that last’s 10 hypnotic, poppy tracks might have set him on an entirely different course had it been released in 1994.
But that seems to have been the problem for a man who thinks deeply about his relationship with his fans. “It was a really dark album, something I didn’t know if the audience was ready for,” he says now, pointing out that it would have followed three albums focused on relationships (Tunnel of Love, Human Touch and Lucky Town).
Instead, in 1994, he reconvened the E Street Band for a Greatest Hits tour, then went on to release a solo acoustic set of political Americana (1995’s masterful The Ghost of Tom Joad). Simultaneously, he recorded an album of storming, joyous country rock just to let off some steam, here unveiled as the rousing Somewhere North of Nashville.
Springsteen’s work ethic makes most modern music artists look like dilettantes. Songwriting may come easily to him, but he still puts the work in, chases inspiration when it strikes, recording songs to presentable levels rather than leaving unfinished sketches for a later date (which, as every procrastinator knows, will most often never come). In 1982, new home recording technology gave him the freedom to make his simplest, starkest record, Nebraska.
It now turns out there was another homemade album from that period, LA Garage Session ’83, recorded in a converted garage in Los Angeles. Lighter and brighter than Nebraska, tinged with now dated synths, it lacks the vision of his finest work and is too modest to have delivered the superstardom affirmed by 1984’s Born in the USA.
But the actual songcraft is impeccable. The Klansman offers a spartan folk narrative of evil lurking in America’s soul that resonates chillingly today, while Shut Out the Light contrasts an army veteran’s junkie nightmare with a soul-lifting chorus that hints at themes more fully explored on Born in the USA.
That is the thing, I think, that elevates Springsteen’s archival releases. It is not so much that this box set is crammed with lost masterpieces, but rather that nothing here feels negligible. Much of Springsteen’s work follows familiar folk and blues forms with uncomplicated rhythmic and chordal structures. But within such basic frameworks, he crafts vivid character studies and vignettes, heavy with deeper implications and painted with surprising musical flourishes.
Collaborators from the E Street Band and other ensembles colour in the edges. Springsteen’s emotionally precise and always commanding vocals tie it all together. There is an abundance of marvels to be found on the mesmerically intense Inyo. The Aztec Dance and Ciudad Juarez might seem minor works on first listen but reveal awe-inspiring depths on closer inspection. Springsteen doesn’t really do throwaway.
There are also some absolute belters. Springsteen worried that an album full of sophisticated, romantic, orchestral Broadway show-tune songcraft and smooth crooning might have perplexed fans in the wake of his melancholy country masterpiece of 2019, Western Stars. But the simultaneously recorded Twilight Hours is astonishing in its own right. High Sierra evokes love and tragedy with the grandeur of classic film noir. It conjures the tantalising vision of Springsteen as the musical heir to Frank Sinatra at his most romantically bruised.
All that said, probably my own favourite album here is one he never planned. Perfect World is a compilation of leftovers sequenced into a cohesive set of full-power rock. If I Could Only Be Your Lover was intended for his fantastic 2012 album Wrecking Ball, but “wasn’t political enough.” Its longing narrative of an imagined alternative life could serve as the theme for this entire project, a soaring epic of roads not taken.
The box set is not cheap. It will set you back £295 for a nine-disc vinyl limited edition, or £260 for a seven-disc CD set. For the less committed, there is a compilation titled Lost and Found featuring 20 of the outstanding highlights.
It is a lot of money, but this is not some bonus disc or retrospective elaborating on an all-time great artist’s history – it completely rewrites Springsteen’s career. A classic discography that previously ran to 21 albums has been expanded to 29. And there is more where this came from. Springsteen has promised Tracks Volume III – but only after he has put out his next (already completed) solo album and a separate album of covers.
Much of the work here was recorded in the 1990s, often regarded as Springsteen’s most fallow period, in which he only released three official albums. “I read about myself having a lost period in the Nineties,” Springsteen has noted, citing the excuse that he had a young family and felt “burned out” with the demands of touring. “But I was working on music all the time. I just wasn’t releasing it.”
I guess that’s one advantage of being your own Boss. This remarkable, belated release reminds us exactly why, of all the rock stars of the modern age, Springsteen remains uniquely deserving of that title.
The 10 best tracks from the boxset
1. High Sierra
Immense epic ballad, the deeply romantic tale of a man’s failure to escape from his past that blends Bacharach (un)easy listening with Springsteen Americana. The tragic closing imagery lingers heart-achingly as the song fades.
2. If I Could Only Be Your Lover
Spine-tingling drama, suffused with longing, of a man imagining an alternative path through his life, rippling with spooky guitars and led by a tender vocal: “Everything so quiet, you’d never notice you’re holding a dream.”
3. I’m Not Sleeping
Co-written with prolific Pennsylvania rocker Joe Grushecky, a personal hero of Springsteen’s, this rousing, stormy track rails against information overload and incessant bad news: “Feed the rich, eat the poor, stack their bodies outside my door.”
4. Something in the Well
An atmospheric acoustic and electric weave, with Springsteen’s lonesome vocal floating on strings and guitars, powerfully evoking the cold paranoia of a man hiding secrets from his past, and from himself. “There’s some things in this world should stay forever locked up inside our heads.”
5. Maybe I Don’t Know You
Over a familiar trip hop drum loop and sonorous, soft synths, Springsteen watches a lover as if seeing a stranger in a dawning realisation that there is something rotten at the dark heart of their relationship. Poppy, atmospheric and noirish with perfect vocal weight. “You came to me for understanding and tenderness, but instead I met you with indifference…”
6. Cuidad Juarez
From Inyo comes this chilling and terribly sad acoustic ballad about a Mexican father lamenting a daughter lost in the murder capital of the world. “The drugs flow north / Across the river the guns flow south / The blood flows here from the devil’s mouth”.
7. Unsatisfied Heart
Recorded solo in 1983, this dark drone builds in power, establishing a contrast between sweetly melodious choruses and edgy motorik groove to summon the tension implicit in the title. Springsteen obsessive Adam Granduciel has covered it with his band The War on Drugs.
8. Detail Man
Raunchy country rock and roll romp, full of growling boasts about just how great the Boss is going to treat his lover: “I’ll kiss you in places other men ain’t ever heard about!” Assorted members of the E Street Band join in the fun, and there’s a ripping pedal-steel guitar solo from Marty Rifkin.
9. Waiting on the End of the World
An insistent loop, thick synth and fuzzy sustained guitar pulse through Springsteen’s depiction of an apocalypse of the heart. This actually sounds like the entire career of The War on Drugs over three minutes of dark pop drama.
10. Perfect World
A perfect pop song: soft, dreamy, quietly tender and gripping. “Every stray dog'd find his way,” imagines Springsteen’s narrator, as he evokes a world where he knows he has already messed everything up beyond salvation.
