How can this much be left? Of the 83 songs on Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II, an overwhelming box of seven unreleased albums (the largest drop of completed records ever?), 74 have never been officially heard. That means they didn’t make it into the first four-disc Tracks (from 27 years ago), or the generously stuffed boxes for Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or The River. They didn’t slot into The Essential Bruce Springsteen (Disc 3), and they never got shuttled to any soundtracks or one-off comps or EPs. All that, and he’s been sitting on a secret record made between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. this whole time? Jeez, you think you know a guy…
With 40+ years of mixed, mastered, and unreleased music, the profound girth of The Lost Albums fills in juicy mythical gaps in Springsteen’s sacred timeline, even as it poses new questions (like how it excludes the fabled “electric Nebraska,” which is either being saved for the Jeremy Allen White movie or something we’re all just trying to will into existence).
The Bruceian revelations boggle the mind and threaten the word count. Here’s the famously unreleased “loops album,” the covert hip-hop-inspired record he laid down in L.A. after becoming intrigued by the low-key power of “Streets of Philadelphia.” Turns out it’s less B-funk than a hazy, haunted little record of relationship paranoia, as sun-splashed and unsettled as a Raymond Chandler novel and featuring members of the … Human Touch touring band?
Here’s the record of more songs from that liminal space between Nebraska and U.S.A., where a restless Bruce continues his search for the creatively satisfying route between the two. To be fair, these L.A. Garage Sessions – including dark narratives such as “Richfield Whistle” and “Unsatisfied Heart” that will be familiar to longtime bootleggers – are largely expanded demos more connected to their predecessor than the behemoth that followed. But they’re still fascinating to regard, if only to further validate Bruce’s final tracklist choices (on everything but “Shut Out the Light” anyway; on what planet does this hard gem get left off of anything?).
Here’s “I’ll Stand by You,” a lavish ballad considered for the first Harry Potter movie and re-housed on the Blinded by the Light soundtrack, but actually the beating heart of a pretty orchestral album (Twilight Hours) swimming in Burt Bacharach orchestration and powered by fairly unprecedented Bruce crooning. Here’s a collection of sturdy bangers (Perfect World, the only title here that Springsteen says wasn’t “initially conceived as an album”) that would slot real nicely into an E Street setlist. Here’s something of a Tom Joad sequel (the gorgeous Inyo), similarly set along the Mexican border but with richer instrumentation and also a mariachi band. Here’s Faithless, an entire soundtrack to some abandoned (and unexplained) film project from the mid-2000s. Here’s an absolute lark of … a honky-tonk record? It’s just so much to take in.
Naturally, it’s fascinating to unpack how these bench projects slot into the starting lineup, as you can physically hear connective tissue stretching out between “Something in the Well” from the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions and The Ghost of Tom Joad, which he apparently recorded alongside that country album — sometimes on the same day.
It’s equally bonkers to psychoanalyze how some songs have jumped around in time. Turns out “Somewhere North of Nashville” wasn’t just a strange interlude on 2019’s Western Stars, but a foundational layer for that country record from 20 years before that also finally provided a proper home to two U.S.A. B-sides — an un-synthified “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart” and a slower, crunchier “Stand on It.” Here’s a “My Hometown,” sung 12 octaves up in the style of Dylan, alongside “Johnny Bye Bye” and “Follow That Dream,” oft-revised and oft-bootlegged chestnuts from The River tour.
Much of this Boss buffet is incredible; a smaller percentage feels like Springsteen taking some larks out for a musical ride. As per accepted law of outtakes sets, your mileage may vary in terms of replayability. But very often, just when you might be drifting away for a moment, some lyric, some melody, some “If I Could Only Be Your Lover” or “When I Build My Beautiful House” reaches out from the past and stakes its claim to the present. Anyone even a little interested in Springsteen’s ever-expanding legacy can spend days digging through this old gold, and they should.
