BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

Unsatisfied heart

“Can you live with an unsatisfied heart?”. The question echoes off the walls of a garage in the Hollywood hills. Eternal dissatisfaction, that's the crux of it. That obsession that resurfaces every time the tape recorder clicks on. Can you live with a heart that's never satisfied?

When it comes time to step into the studio, perfectionism has always been the obsession of Bruce Springsteen. “I've always taken great care with my albums,” he admits. “I wanted to make sure my narratives fit together.” The polar opposite, one might say, of Bob Dylan, who has always treated the album format with a kind of moody indifference, convinced of the impossibility of pinning a song down in one definitive form.

For opposite reasons, then, both have amassed an incredible archive of unreleased recordings. And following in the footsteps of Dylan's “Bootleg Series” (itself a forerunner of Neil Young's “Archives”), Springsteen had already released, back in 1998, the monumental collection “Tracks”, drawing on the best of 25 years of outtakes as a prelude to his historic reunion with the E Street Band.

That's why the news of the release of seven unreleased Springsteen albums (totaling a staggering 83 songs...) is the kind that leaves you stunned: could there really still be that much material tucked away in those drawers? All the more so since, in the meantime, two other unreleased albums had already seen official release: “The Promise” (an alternate version of “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”) and “The Ties That Bind” (an alternate version of “The River“). So what exactly does the (extremely pricey) treasure chest of “Tracks II” hold?

A stranger to myself

"The albums in this collection didn't fit the narrative of my creative arc," Springsteen explains. "They're all a kind of anomaly." If you're looking for a common thread running through the seven chapters of this Springsteen-ian miscellany, it's probably just that: the search for one's own identity, with all the forks in the road, side streets, and digressions the journey entails.

How do you reach success without losing yourself? How do you face success while staying true to your own soul? And how do you avoid losing, along the way, the bonds that matter most in your life? It's around questions like these that these songs keep turning, starting, not by chance, from one of the most critical moments of Springsteen's career, the one captured in "L.A. Garage Sessions '83."

We're in the immediate aftermath of the release of “Nebraska“, his great line of shadow, and this time Bruce can't simply set off as usual on a new tour with his E Street Band buddies. He's bought a house in California (his first-ever home), he's crossed America on the road to get there, but at journey's end he finds himself alone in front of the mirror. He's got half an album already finished in his hands, the rock'n'roll counterpart to the previous one, but he's not sure it's really what he wants. And so, in the spartan recording studio he's set up in the garage, he starts to wander off the path.

The stripped-down essence of “Nebraska” seeks a new direction – the same one that will, years later, lead to the arrival of “Tunnel Of Love” – where the sober acoustic skeleton gets dressed up in keyboards and drum machines, as on the vibrant unease of “Fugitive's Dream”. There are characters who seem to have stepped out of some Raymond Carver story, from “Richfield Whistle” to the Dylanesque tones of “Jim Deer”, but at the same time there's also the shadow of a reluctant “Born In The U.S.A.”, one that would like to escape its own bombast (the shaky sketch of “My Hometown”) but can't quite manage it.

So the lightness of “Don't Back Down” and “Little Girl Like You” ends up coexisting with the intensity of “Sugarland” and “Black Mountain Ballad”, never quite finding a true point of cohesion: “L.A. Garage Sessions '83” is the diary of a rite of passage before global stardom, one that could easily have been included in a box set devoted to the two opposite twins “Nebraska” and “Born In The U.S.A.“.

It's no coincidence that it's also the album with the most already-familiar songs in the batch (the ghost of Elvis haunting “Follow That Dream” and “Johnny Bye Bye”, the shadow of Vietnam hanging over “Shut Out The Light”, right up to the attempt to seize the fleeting moment in “County Fair”). But even just the agonizing fatalism of “The Klansman” alone would be enough to make it essential listening, with its insistent bassline and its haze of synths.

At this point, though, the obvious question arises: is "Tracks II" really a collection of "lost albums," or is the slogan just a stretch to package together a more or less disparate set of outtakes?

There’s something in the well

The answer comes immediately in chapter two, "Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions": yes, indeed, "Tracks II" really does contain albums that were already finished and ready to hit record store shelves. And despite its rather plain, descriptive title, this is the most emblematic case of all: the solo record that, in the mid-Nineties, was scrapped to make way for the return of the E Street Band.

At the time, Springsteen's image seemed irreparably tarnished, after the uncertainties of the studio ("Human Touch"/"Lucky Town") and the stage (the tour with his notorious other band). The unexpected success of "Streets Of Philadelphia" marked his moment of redemption: it was inevitable that he'd try to follow it up with a full album. In his home studio, Springsteen began working with drum loops (sampled or purpose-built) and keyboard backing, leaving the guitars in the background for once. The result, as he himself has said, is a sound that's "dark and dreamlike," capable of giving shape to a handful of surprisingly inspired songs.

One shouldn't be too misled by the prologue of "Blind Spot," which gives in to the temptation of chasing the trends of the moment: starting with the pronounced rhythm of "Maybe I Don't Know You," the mood of "Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions" grows drier, more intimate, and at the same time more enveloping. The vocals are restrained and pensive, the synths intertwining with Shane Fontayne's electric guitar.

There's a tremor of strings in "Something In The Well," a choral echo in "Secret Garden" (later re-recorded with the E Street Band for the 1995 "Greatest Hits"). But these are songs steeped in solitude, unfolding between the sinuous melody of "We Fell Down" and the chiaroscuro of "Between Heaven And Earth" — nocturnal, brooding songs that, in "Waiting On The End Of The World," seem to want to bring things full circle with the introspection of "Tunnel Of Love".

"It would have been another record focused on relationships, after three others already like it. The timing wasn't right." And so, instead of coming out as planned in the spring of 1995, one of the most accomplished records in Springsteen's post-Eighties discography was shelved for thirty years.

Goin' to California

It's precisely that goateed Springsteen of the Nineties on whom "Tracks II" shines its spotlight: what until yesterday looked like one of his least prolific periods ever turns out to have been running on a hidden creative current all along. "Somewhere North Of Nashville" and "Inyo" confirm as much, two albums that act as companions respectively to "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" and to "Devils & Dust", and which once again capture a defining crossroads for Springsteen: the search for a voice that could still ring true despite the privilege that comes with success. Springsteen finds that voice in the guise of a storyteller for an America on the margins, an America of migration and inequality, inhabited by characters struggling with life just like his antiheroes of old (though the center of gravity has now shifted to California, rather than New Jersey).

By day Springsteen works on the songs for "Somewhere North Of Nashville", by night on the ones that will make up "The Ghost Of Tom Joad": the idea is a single, unified album, but in the end, by late 1995, the decision will be to release only the material united by its darker tones. That's why the songs surfacing today are far more varied than the cohesive official album, ranging from the rockabilly of "Repo Man" to the romanticism of "Under A Big Sky". Springsteen reworks in a country vein a few tracks from the "Born In The U.S.A." era ("Janey Don't You Lose Heart" and "Stand On It"), and offers a soft version of Johnny Rivers's "Poor Side Of Town". A few longtime E Street Band members are on hand (Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Suzie Tyrell), but it's Marty Rifkin's pedal steel that claims center stage, fresh off recording "Wildflowers" with Tom Petty and soon to become Springsteen's traveling companion in the Seeger Sessions Band.

During the tour for "The Ghost Of Tom Joad", Springsteen kept writing more stories: "Every night in the hotel I kept expanding my repertoire, digging deeper into the new vein I'd discovered." These are the songs he would later draw on for "Devils & Dust", though here too there would have been enough material for a double album. "Inyo" collects precisely the leftover songs from 1995-1997, in which Springsteen's acoustic storytelling focuses mainly on the Mexican side of the border.

The title track, dedicated to the California county of the same name, tells the story of how water was brought to Los Angeles in the early twentieth century at the expense of farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley, while "Adelita" draws inspiration from the exploits of the soldaderas during the nineteenth-century Mexican-American War. "The Lost Charro" boasts a full-on mariachi combo, and "Ciudad Juarez" is lit up by a wistful trumpet: overall, though, the atmospheres stick closely to the "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" template without many surprises.

Down on my luck

If the "lost albums" label doesn't quite seem to fit "Somewhere North Of Nashville" and "Inyo", the collection's other acoustic chapter, "Faithless", truly stands as an album in its own right. It's the soundtrack Springsteen composed between 2005 and 2006 for a "spiritual western" that never saw the light of day. And it's another of "Tracks II"'s surprises, since it reveals a folk-gospel side of him never heard before, built on shaky choruses (on "Where You Going, Where You From" his sons Evan and Sam even join in), half-whispered prayers, and dusty guitars straight out of "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid".

The path of spontaneity and roots is the same one that would soon lead to the release of "Seeger Sessions" (just listen to "All God's Children" to believe it), but what's most fascinating about "Faithless" is above all its sense of incompleteness, its unguarded gaze. And Springsteen's voice seems to come from the tormented soul of some Cormac McCarthy character, teetering on the thin edge between good and evil: "I will pray to understand/ I will walk these barren lands," he murmurs over the arpeggios of "My Master's Hand". "I will follow his command/ I'll be the hammer in my master's hand".

And so we arrive at the more bittersweet notes of "Tracks II", with the box set's final two volumes.

"Twilight Hours" (the product of two separate sessions, between 2010-2011 and 2017-2018) is the flip side of "Western Stars", though it never quite manages to strike the same balance in paying tribute to the great American pop songbook tradition. Its guiding spirits here are Burt Bacharach and Roy Orbison, but Springsteen too often lets the sentimentality get away from him (there's even a song written for the Harry Potter saga, "I'll Stand By You"...), even if "High Sierra" still delivers a ballad with real cinematic sweep.

As for "Perfect World," Springsteen himself admits the reason for its inclusion: "There was a lot of stuff in this collection, but there wasn't any rock music. And I know I've got rock fans out there..." In short, lacking a rock "lost album," Springsteen apparently decided to cobble together, as an epilogue, a handful of songs recorded here and there between 1994 and 2011... There are the songs co-written with his friend Joe Grushecky ("I'm Not Sleeping," "Idiot's Delight," and "Another Thin Line," all rather bland), a few cameo appearances from the E Street Band and Tom Morello, and the leftovers from "Wrecking Ball" ("If I Could Only Be Your Lover"). But the heartland rock on display in "Perfect World" is rather short of breath, and the only track really worth remembering is "Rain In The River" (actually salvaged from the same sessions as "Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions").

In a nearly perfect world

So, in short, how would the timeline of Springsteen's career have changed had these seven albums come out at the right moment? Would "Born In The U.S.A." still have happened, and would it have turned out the same as the one we know? Would the foreseeable success of a solo record in the style of "Streets Of Philadelphia" have changed anything about the reconciliation with the E Street Band? Or again, how might a more traditionally country-flavored "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" have been received?

Sometimes it's precisely the detours from the main road that give a portrait back its authenticity. The more than five hours of music in this sort of Springsteenian alternate history could never match the treasure trove of wonders found on the first "Tracks", but they do allow an important chapter of his trajectory to be rewritten. After all, Bruce himself admits that the archives are still far from exhausted... The story has not yet finished being told.

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08/08/2025