On Springsteen’s ‘Tracks II,’ a trove of worthy castoffs

Article content

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

A long time ago, in a century far, far away, Bruce Springsteen released two discrete albums of new music at the same time. “Human Touch” was the one he had sweated over and second-guessed across three calendar years, “Lucky Town” the one he had knocked out in a couple of months thereafter. These were the first records he had released since informing the E Street Band in 1989 that their services were no longer required.

Springsteen’s new box set, “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” marks the simultaneous unveiling of not two or three but seven complete records made between 1983 and 2018. That’s the swath of temporal real estate in which the Boss became an MTV star; suffered a crisis of confidence and reemerged as a sombre, goateed balladeer; then – in the wake of 9/11 and the reassembly and expansion of the E Street Band – matured into a beloved elder statesman and international goodwill ambassador.

These long-shelved records transcend eras, genres and sartorial regrets. They also reveal that what looked like distinct, easily sorted phases in the latter half of Springsteen’s 60-year career were in fact illusions based on whichever creative identity the Once and Future Boss felt like foregrounding at the time.

An example: When he recorded 1995’s downbeat set of border tales “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” and then set out on a long tour in support of that powerful but almost willfully uncommercial album, the knee-sliding, amp-blowing Boss of lore didn’t go into a coma. We now know this because “Somewhere North of Nashville,” one of the previously unknown albums included in this treasure trove, was recorded concurrently featuring the same players. And it’s a barn-burner, more country-fried and twangy than his albums with the E Street Band, but still the kind of boisterous, upbeat music that the rowdy fans who couldn’t abide his nightly requests for quiet on the folkie, solo acoustic “Joad” tour might’ve welcomed.

“The L.A. Garage Sessions ’83” is the outlier. Its 18 tracks are a decade older than any of the other music here. Die-hards will probably know them – from their infrequent live performances, from “Born in the U.S.A.”-era B-sides (later compiled on the first “Tracks” set) or from long-circulating bootlegs. They capture a self-described “gun shy of fame” Springsteen continuing to experiment with home recording on the opposite coast after “Nebraska,” a record for which he famously chose to release his four-track solo cassette demos instead of the subsequent full-band studio takes, which he found lacking in magic.

Empowered, as longtime Springsteen historian Erik Flannigan explains in his liner notes, by the discovery that he could explore new paths without dragging his band into a studio for two years, Springsteen continued working in that vein. While bits of lyrics from these often ghostly, reverb-heavy tracks found their way onto more familiar releases later, only “My Hometown,” included here in a version on which Springsteen sounds more hoarse than usual, made it onto “Born in the U.S.A.” the next year.

It’s puzzling that Springsteen has opted at last to share these era-bridging recordings this way, instead of on a past-due 40th-anniversary edition of “U.S.A.” A jumbo-size reissue of the Boss’s best-selling album – the one that turned him, for better and worse, into a mainstream celebrity – would’ve felt like a given after the tricked-out deluxe versions of “Born to Run,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “The River” he put out circa 2005-2015.

Anyway, after the ’83 stuff, we still have more than four hours of music that even former Backstreets magazine subscribers (RIP, Backstreets) have never heard in any form. Want wintry mid-Atlantic depressive Bruce? I give you “The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,” an introspective set recorded in the same percussion-loop-based style that begot his Oscar-winning song for Jonathan Demme’s film “Philadelphia.” Fans for whom decades of rumours about a shelved Springsteen hip-hop record conjured images of, say, Warren Beatty rapping in the bizarro 1998 satire “Bulworth” can relax.

You prefer redemption-seeking searcher Bruce? “Faithless,” compiling songs and instrumentals he was commissioned to compose 20 years ago for an unnamed “spiritual Western,” is meditative and haunting, tender and rapturous. The film this music was written for remains unmade, but the movie it inspires in the listener’s mind could’ve been directed by Jane Campion or John Ford.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

How about mariachi Bruce? (I’m sorry, it sounded like you said mariachi Bruce.) He’s here, too, on “Inyo,” which returns to the Texas and California border settings of “Tom Joad” but accompanies its tales of striving migrants, conflicted cops and vanished loves with brighter and more varied instrumentation. It revives Springsteen’s penchant for stealing movie titles with “One False Move,” inspired by Carl Franklin’s superb 1992 Bill Paxton-starring southern noir. No skips.

A more surprising success than mariachi Bruce is easy-listening Bruce. “Twilight Hours,” his experiment in Bacharach/David-style balladry, is at least as good a showcase for his age-70-plus singing as “Only the Strong Survive,” the weirdly sterile 2022 set of soul and R & B covers that set out to emphasize his September-of-my-years vocals. Hey, Sinatra was from New Jersey, too. Like “Somewhere North of Nashville,” “Twilight Hours” was recorded in tandem with a more familiar album, the equally confident “Western Stars.” Evidently Springsteen thought the cowboy hat fit him better than the fedora.

None of this material is embarrassing, and much of it is inspired. At 83 tracks and 5⅓ hours, “Tracks II” is an investment, a commitment and an odyssey. It’s 20-track sampler version, “Lost and Found,” seems pointless in the streaming era. This new menagerie is a gift not least because of what it says about Springsteen’s obsessive self-curation. “I’ve always released my records with great care,” he writes in the set’s introduction, “making sure my narratives built upon one another.”

Finishing these up for release was a pandemic project for the workaholic Springsteen. But he’s been operating in legacy mode for more than a decade now, uncorking a still-flowing river of archival live releases, the memoir “Born to Run,” its stage adaptation “Springsteen on Broadway,” several documentaries, a podcast with President Barack Obama (!) and, most frightening of all, the upcoming feature film “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” starring Jeremy Allen White as “Nebraska”-era Bruuuuuuuce.

While the first “Tracks,” released a generation ago in 1998, included material from before Springsteen assembled the E Street Band and from after he dismissed it, the collection was still a band-forward affair. Nearly every member of the present-day E Street Band plays on “Tracks II” in some capacity, but they don’t feel present as a collective.

Five of these seven albums are conspicuously LP-sized, as in 40 minutes long or less. “Garage Sessions” and “Twilight Hours” are each spread over four sides of wax – if you’re willing to part with Something North of Three Hundred Dollars to hear them in that format.

“The joy of these records to me now are their imperfections,” Springsteen reflects in his introduction. Certainly I can think of a dozen songs from his “regular” albums I would rate below anything in these lost ones – and not just most of “Human Touch.” These albums may have been imperfect for their times, but for these times, they’re close enough to perfect.

Love concerts, but can't make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances.