‘Tracks II: The Lost Albums' by Bruce Springsteen Review: He Wasn't Resting

Wall Street Journal

7 hours ago

For years, the line on Bruce Springsteen in the 1990s was that he was either creatively adrift or set music aside while raising his children. Either way, he'd lost relevance. The pair of albums he released in 1992, 'Human Touch' and 'Lucky Town,' had a handful of excellent songs between them, but they mostly comprised down-the-middle singer-songwriter rock fare. 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' from 1995, an acoustic record in the vein of 1982's 'Nebraska,' was a curveball, and some fans consider it a major work. But the timing was off, and it didn't quite fit in a decade defined by a new generation's alternative music. It wasn't until Mr. Springsteen returned with 2002's 'The Rising,' an E Street Band LP shaped by the attacks of 9/11, that he fully reclaimed his place in popular music, and he hasn't lost his grip on it since.
With the arrival of the large and expensive boxed set 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums' (Columbia), out Friday, we have a better sense of how Mr. Springsteen spent what was perceived to be downtime: He made strong albums and didn't release them. Three of the seven LPs included in this set were conceived and at least partly recorded in the '90s and a fourth is rooted in his experiments during the decade. Along with this bounty, there's a collection of material cut between 'Nebraska' and 1984's blockbuster, 'Born in the U.S.A.,' plus two sets of more recent vintage. Taken as a whole, 'Lost Albums' offers an intriguing glimpse of an alternate career for Mr. Springsteen, one a little more freewheeling, where he zigzags between genres and styles.