Music Review: Bruce Springsteen takes seven ‘Lost Albums' off the shelf for a new box set
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Perhaps as a result, the most interesting work on 'Tracks II' comes when he stretches out and explores pathways not in his wheelhouse: countrypolitan Bruce, border-town Bruce, Burt Bacharach-inspired Bruce and a set of synthesizer-based songs modeled after his Oscar-winning 'Streets of Philadelphia.' Oddly, the one disc of strays cobbled together that feels most like an E Street Band record is the least compelling.
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Breaking down a big pool of music
Since these are seven distinct albums, it's worth evaluating them that way.
'LA Garage Sessions '83' captures Springsteen working virtually alone at a home in the Hollywood Hills. It was squarely in between his 'Nebraska' and 'Born in the USA' albums, and he seems torn between those two approaches. There are character studies here, and more lighthearted fare like 'Little Girl Like You,' with a single man yearning to settle down. The most striking cut is 'The Klansman,' about a boy and his racist father, yet it cries out for more development. Ultimately, Springsteen chose the right albums to release at the time.
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The song 'Streets of Philadelphia' was a genuine departure musically, and Springsteen decided to make an album in the same vein, with synthesizers and drum loops the dominant elements. If released in the early 1990s, this would have been the most contemporary-sounding disc of his career, with atmospherics that occasionally recall U2. Springsteen pulled it at the last minute, reasoning that the stories of doomed relationships — sample lyric: 'We loved each other like a disease' — was too much like 'Tunnel of Love.'
At the same time he recorded 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' in 1995, Springsteen also convened a country band steered by pedal steel player Marty Rifkin. Their work was terrific, led by the one-two punch of 'Repo Man' and the Johnny Rivers cover, 'Poor Side of Town.' The title cut to a disc he calls 'Somewhere North of Nashville' escaped into the public some two decades later. Since the somber 'Joad' won a Grammy, who are we to second-guess his choice of what to put out? 'Nashville,' though, is a rollicking good time.
'Inyo' is similar to 'Joad' and 'Devils & Dust,' mostly acoustic-based narratives, here many of them stories of the Southwest. Springsteen even appropriately brings in mariachi bands for 'Adelita' and 'The Lost Charro.' Soozie Tyrell's violin is notable, particularly on the majestic 'When I Build My Beautiful House.' We're guessing that Springsteen may have considered 'Inyo' one album too many in the same style, but it's still strong work.
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At one point Springsteen considered making 'Western Stars,' his salute to early 1970s California songwriting, a double album. When he didn't, the songs on 'Twilight Hours' were left behind. Here Bacharach is the primary influence, and this almost feels like Elvis Costello's collaboration with Burt, only without him (and is the lyric 'God give me strength' a hat-tip to that project?). The crooning Bruce of 'Sunday Love' is spellbinding, maybe the box's best song. 'Lonely Town' sits at the intersection of Bacharach and Roy Orbison, while 'Dinner at Eight' is a lovely sum-up. 'Twilight Hours' may startle Springsteen fans — and impress them, too.
The workmanlike songs on 'Faithless' were written on commission in two weeks, the soundtrack to a movie that was never made. It's a good bet it would have been a moody Western.
When Springsteen duels with Tom Morello on the song 'Another Thin Line,' you realize how little you've heard his electric guitar on 'Tracks II.' The album 'Perfect World' is the one here made up of leftovers from different periods, with the greatest E Street Band participation. Here's the deal, though: Most good E Street Band material has already been released. The best left behind for this disc is 'You Lifted Me Up,' with minimalist lyrics and a vocal collaboration with Patti Scialfa and Steve Van Zandt.
The box gives Springsteen completists plenty to mull over, and you can question whether these 'lost discs' would get more attention released separately instead of together. If it's too much, he's releasing a 20-song set of its highlights.
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2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Bruce Springsteen Unearths His Many ‘Lost' Eras On ‘Tracks II'
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). More from Spin: Devo, The B-52s Make Touring Team Brittany Davis Brings The 'Thunder' On New LP Noah Cyrus Welcomes Blake Shelton, Bill Callahan On New LP 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. To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
4 hours ago
Music Review: Bruce Springsteen takes seven 'Lost Albums' off the shelf for a new box set
NEW YORK -- NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Springsteen's new project, 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums,' is entirely about that age-old question: What if? The box set, out June 27, comprises seven albums encompassing the period between 1983 and 2018, all but one he prepared to release in its time but ultimately shelved. Now that he's decided to drop them simultaneously, they offer a fascinating alternative story of his musical life. Building on its predecessor 'Tracks,' 1998's four-disc, 66-song collection of unreleased material, there are 83 songs here. While some slipped out on other projects — 'My Hometown' and 'Secret Garden' among them — the vast majority hadn't been heard publicly. This is all fully completed material, not half-baked or half-finished outtakes. It's not unusual for artists to leave songs — or even full-lengths — on the cutting-room floor, but multiple entire albums? Springsteen explains that he's taken care releasing albums, looking to build a narrative arc for his career, and believes this approach has served him well. Perhaps as a result, the most interesting work on 'Tracks II' comes when he stretches out and explores pathways not in his wheelhouse: countrypolitan Bruce, border-town Bruce, Burt Bacharach-inspired Bruce and a set of synthesizer-based songs modeled after his Oscar-winning 'Streets of Philadelphia.' Oddly, the one disc of strays cobbled together that feels most like an E Street Band record is the least compelling. Since these are seven distinct albums, it's worth evaluating them that way. 'LA Garage Sessions '83' captures Springsteen working virtually alone at a home in the Hollywood Hills. It was squarely in between his 'Nebraska' and 'Born in the USA' albums, and he seems torn between those two approaches. There are character studies here, and more lighthearted fare like 'Little Girl Like You,' with a single man yearning to settle down. The most striking cut is 'The Klansman,' about a boy and his racist father, yet it cries out for more development. Ultimately, Springsteen chose the right albums to release at the time. The song 'Streets of Philadelphia' was a genuine departure musically, and Springsteen decided to make an album in the same vein, with synthesizers and drum loops the dominant elements. If released in the early 1990s, this would have been the most contemporary-sounding disc of his career, with atmospherics that occasionally recall U2. Springsteen pulled it at the last minute, reasoning that the stories of doomed relationships — sample lyric: 'We loved each other like a disease' — was too much like 'Tunnel of Love.' At the same time he recorded 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' in 1995, Springsteen also convened a country band steered by pedal steel player Marty Rifkin. Their work was terrific, led by the one-two punch of 'Repo Man' and the Johnny Rivers cover, 'Poor Side of Town.' The title cut to a disc he calls 'Somewhere North of Nashville' escaped into the public some two decades later. Since the somber 'Joad' won a Grammy, who are we to second-guess his choice of what to put out? 'Nashville,' though, is a rollicking good time. 'Inyo' is similar to 'Joad' and 'Devils & Dust,' mostly acoustic-based narratives, here many of them stories of the Southwest. Springsteen even appropriately brings in mariachi bands for 'Adelita' and 'The Lost Charro.' Soozie Tyrell's violin is notable, particularly on the majestic 'When I Build My Beautiful House.' We're guessing that Springsteen may have considered 'Inyo' one album too many in the same style, but it's still strong work. At one point Springsteen considered making 'Western Stars,' his salute to early 1970s California songwriting, a double album. When he didn't, the songs on 'Twilight Hours' were left behind. Here Bacharach is the primary influence, and this almost feels like Elvis Costello's collaboration with Burt, only without him (and is the lyric 'God give me strength' a hat-tip to that project?). The crooning Bruce of 'Sunday Love' is spellbinding, maybe the box's best song. 'Lonely Town' sits at the intersection of Bacharach and Roy Orbison, while 'Dinner at Eight' is a lovely sum-up. 'Twilight Hours' may startle Springsteen fans — and impress them, too. The workmanlike songs on 'Faithless' were written on commission in two weeks, the soundtrack to a movie that was never made. It's a good bet it would have been a moody Western. When Springsteen duels with Tom Morello on the song 'Another Thin Line,' you realize how little you've heard his electric guitar on 'Tracks II.' The album 'Perfect World' is the one here made up of leftovers from different periods, with the greatest E Street Band participation. Here's the deal, though: Most good E Street Band material has already been released. The best left behind for this disc is 'You Lifted Me Up,' with minimalist lyrics and a vocal collaboration with Patti Scialfa and Steve Van Zandt. The box gives Springsteen completists plenty to mull over, and you can question whether these 'lost discs' would get more attention released separately instead of together. If it's too much, he's releasing a 20-song set of its highlights.
Hamilton Spectator
5 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Music Review: Bruce Springsteen takes seven ‘Lost Albums' off the shelf for a new box set
NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Springsteen's new project, 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums,' is entirely about that age-old question: What if? The box set, out June 27, comprises seven albums encompassing the period between 1983 and 2018, all but one he prepared to release in its time but ultimately shelved. Now that he's decided to drop them simultaneously, they offer a fascinating alternative story of his musical life. Building on its predecessor 'Tracks,' 1998's four-disc, 66-song collection of unreleased material, there are 83 songs here. While some slipped out on other projects — 'My Hometown' and 'Secret Garden' among them — the vast majority hadn't been heard publicly. This is all fully completed material, not half-baked or half-finished outtakes. It's not unusual for artists to leave songs — or even full-lengths — on the cutting-room floor, but multiple entire albums? Springsteen explains that he's taken care releasing albums, looking to build a narrative arc for his career, and believes this approach has served him well. Perhaps as a result, the most interesting work on 'Tracks II' comes when he stretches out and explores pathways not in his wheelhouse: countrypolitan Bruce, border-town Bruce, Burt Bacharach-inspired Bruce and a set of synthesizer-based songs modeled after his Oscar-winning 'Streets of Philadelphia.' Oddly, the one disc of strays cobbled together that feels most like an E Street Band record is the least compelling. Breaking down a big pool of music Since these are seven distinct albums, it's worth evaluating them that way. 'LA Garage Sessions '83' captures Springsteen working virtually alone at a home in the Hollywood Hills. It was squarely in between his 'Nebraska' and 'Born in the USA' albums, and he seems torn between those two approaches. There are character studies here, and more lighthearted fare like 'Little Girl Like You,' with a single man yearning to settle down. The most striking cut is 'The Klansman,' about a boy and his racist father, yet it cries out for more development. Ultimately, Springsteen chose the right albums to release at the time. The song 'Streets of Philadelphia' was a genuine departure musically, and Springsteen decided to make an album in the same vein, with synthesizers and drum loops the dominant elements. If released in the early 1990s, this would have been the most contemporary-sounding disc of his career, with atmospherics that occasionally recall U2. Springsteen pulled it at the last minute, reasoning that the stories of doomed relationships — sample lyric: 'We loved each other like a disease' — was too much like 'Tunnel of Love.' At the same time he recorded 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' in 1995, Springsteen also convened a country band steered by pedal steel player Marty Rifkin. Their work was terrific, led by the one-two punch of 'Repo Man' and the Johnny Rivers cover, 'Poor Side of Town.' The title cut to a disc he calls 'Somewhere North of Nashville' escaped into the public some two decades later. Since the somber 'Joad' won a Grammy, who are we to second-guess his choice of what to put out? 'Nashville,' though, is a rollicking good time. 'Inyo' is similar to 'Joad' and 'Devils & Dust,' mostly acoustic-based narratives, here many of them stories of the Southwest. Springsteen even appropriately brings in mariachi bands for 'Adelita' and 'The Lost Charro.' Soozie Tyrell's violin is notable, particularly on the majestic 'When I Build My Beautiful House.' We're guessing that Springsteen may have considered 'Inyo' one album too many in the same style, but it's still strong work. At one point Springsteen considered making 'Western Stars,' his salute to early 1970s California songwriting, a double album. When he didn't, the songs on 'Twilight Hours' were left behind. Here Bacharach is the primary influence, and this almost feels like Elvis Costello's collaboration with Burt, only without him (and is the lyric 'God give me strength' a hat-tip to that project?). The crooning Bruce of 'Sunday Love' is spellbinding, maybe the box's best song. 'Lonely Town' sits at the intersection of Bacharach and Roy Orbison, while 'Dinner at Eight' is a lovely sum-up. 'Twilight Hours' may startle Springsteen fans — and impress them, too. The workmanlike songs on 'Faithless' were written on commission in two weeks, the soundtrack to a movie that was never made. It's a good bet it would have been a moody Western. When Springsteen duels with Tom Morello on the song 'Another Thin Line,' you realize how little you've heard his electric guitar on 'Tracks II.' The album 'Perfect World' is the one here made up of leftovers from different periods, with the greatest E Street Band participation. Here's the deal, though: Most good E Street Band material has already been released. The best left behind for this disc is 'You Lifted Me Up,' with minimalist lyrics and a vocal collaboration with Patti Scialfa and Steve Van Zandt. The box gives Springsteen completists plenty to mull over, and you can question whether these 'lost discs' would get more attention released separately instead of together. If it's too much, he's releasing a 20-song set of its highlights. ___ David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at and . ___ For more AP reviews of recent music releases, visit .
