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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bruce Springsteen's 83-song ‘Lost Albums' is the greatest musical treasure trove of all time
This is surely the greatest box set of all time. It is what box sets were invented for, an alternative history of one of the great musical artists of our age that is every bit as compelling as his actual history. Bruce Springsteen, Tracks II: The Lost Albums features seven unreleased albums written and recorded between 1983 and 2018, including 83 original songs, only nine of which have been heard before (and seven of those in completely different versions). These are not sketches, demos or drafts. They are complete albums, finished to the last detail. It is awe-inspiring to contemplate, like stumbling across a buried treasure trove of one of the greatest talents in his field, created at the peak of his powers, then put aside for mysterious reasons, locked away and forgotten. Or almost. As Springsteen has said of his prolific songwriting, when a song doesn't fit his plans, 'I put them away, but I don't throw them away.' Tracks II is a companion to 1998's Tracks, a compilation of 66 out-takes and leftovers from 1972 and 1995. But that pales beside what Springsteen has accomplished here. The great singer-songwriter spent the pandemic going through his personal archives, completing albums that in some cases only he knew even existed. Now, 83 songs is a lot of music for even the most ardent fan to consume in one gulp. It is a testament to the lofty level at which Springsteen operates that this stuff is genuinely good. There's not a single sloppy demo or half-hearted throwaway among them. Which is not to suggest it is better than his official discography of 11 studio albums released during the same period. It is just different – the work of an artist exploring alternative possibilities. 'Many of these records were done on a whim,' he writes in the copious liner notes, 'experimenting with genres out of my wheelhouse.' Among the revelations here are: a lush, noirish orchestral album in a Burt Bacharach vein (Twilight Hours); a moody soundtrack to a spiritual western (Faithless); a sombre Tex-Mex record about the South American diaspora (Inyo); and an atmospheric trip-hop album of brooding broken love songs (The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions). Exploring the loops and synths of Springsteen's Oscar-winning theme song to the film of the same name, that last's 10 hypnotic, poppy tracks might have set him on an entirely different course had it been released in 1994. But that seems to have been the problem for a man who thinks deeply about his relationship with his fans. 'It was a really dark album, something I didn't know if the audience was ready for,' he says now, pointing out that it would have followed three albums focused on relationships (Tunnel of Love, Human Touch and Lucky Town). Instead, in 1994, he reconvened the E Street Band for a Greatest Hits tour, then went on to release a solo acoustic set of political Americana (1995's masterful The Ghost of Tom Joad). Simultaneously, he recorded an album of storming, joyous country rock just to let off some steam, here unveiled as the rousing Somewhere North of Nashville. Springsteen's work ethic makes most modern music artists look like dilettantes. Songwriting may come easily to him, but he still puts the work in, chases inspiration when it strikes, recording songs to presentable levels rather than leaving unfinished sketches for a later date (which, as every procrastinator knows, will most often never come). In 1982, new home recording technology gave him the freedom to make his simplest, starkest record, Nebraska. It now turns out there was another homemade album from that period, LA Garage Session '83, recorded in a converted garage in Los Angeles. Lighter and brighter than Nebraska, tinged with now dated synths, it lacks the vision of his finest work and is too modest to have delivered the superstardom affirmed by 1984's Born in the USA. But the actual songcraft is impeccable. The Klansman offers a spartan folk narrative of evil lurking in America's soul that resonates chillingly today, while Shut Out the Light contrasts an army veteran's junkie nightmare with a soul-lifting chorus that hints at themes more fully explored on Born in the USA. That is the thing, I think, that elevates Springsteen's archival releases. It is not so much that this box set is crammed with lost masterpieces, but rather that nothing here feels negligible. Much of Springsteen's work follows familiar folk and blues forms with uncomplicated rhythmic and chordal structures. But within such basic frameworks, he crafts vivid character studies and vignettes, heavy with deeper implications and painted with surprising musical flourishes. Collaborators from the E Street Band and other ensembles colour in the edges. Springsteen's emotionally precise and always commanding vocals tie it all together. There is an abundance of marvels to be found on the mesmerically intense Inyo. The Aztec Dance and Ciudad Juarez might seem minor works on first listen but reveal awe-inspiring depths on closer inspection. Springsteen doesn't really do throwaway. There are also some absolute belters. Springsteen worried that an album full of sophisticated, romantic, orchestral Broadway show-tune songcraft and smooth crooning might have perplexed fans in the wake of his melancholy country masterpiece of 2019, Western Stars. But the simultaneously recorded Twilight Hours is astonishing in its own right. High Sierra evokes love and tragedy with the grandeur of classic film noir. It conjures the tantalising vision of Springsteen as the musical heir to Frank Sinatra at his most romantically bruised. All that said, probably my own favourite album here is one he never planned. Perfect World is a compilation of leftovers sequenced into a cohesive set of full-power rock. If I Could Only Be Your Lover was intended for his fantastic 2012 album Wrecking Ball, but 'wasn't political enough.' Its longing narrative of an imagined alternative life could serve as the theme for this entire project, a soaring epic of roads not taken. The box set is not cheap. It will set you back £295 for a nine-disc vinyl limited edition, or £260 for a seven-disc CD set. For the less committed, there is a compilation titled Lost and Found featuring 20 of the outstanding highlights. It is a lot of money, but this is not some bonus disc or retrospective elaborating on an all-time great artist's history – it completely rewrites Springsteen's career. A classic discography that previously ran to 21 albums has been expanded to 29. And there is more where this came from. Springsteen has promised Tracks Volume III – but only after he has put out his next (already completed) solo album and a separate album of covers. Much of the work here was recorded in the 1990s, often regarded as Springsteen's most fallow period, in which he only released three official albums. 'I read about myself having a lost period in the Nineties,' Springsteen has noted, citing the excuse that he had a young family and felt 'burned out' with the demands of touring. 'But I was working on music all the time. I just wasn't releasing it.' I guess that's one advantage of being your own Boss. This remarkable, belated release reminds us exactly why, of all the rock stars of the modern age, Springsteen remains uniquely deserving of that title. Track II: The Lost Albums is released on June 27, via Columbia Records Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bruce Springsteen, the Crooner? Hear Surprising ‘Lost' Track ‘Sunday Love'
'Sunday Love,' a Bruce Springsteen ballad that's premiering today that's officially coming out as part of the Tracks II: The Lost Albums box set, finds the singer-songwriter in crooner mode. With horns and strings, the song recalls the best of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's melodramatic production, while the way his vocal performance flirts lightly with the swinging drums suggests he was interested in Jimmy Webb western pastiche while writing it. 'Each night I pray, each night I pray to God above,' Springsteen sings, 'I never had a Sunday love.' (It also sounds a little like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.) More from Rolling Stone See Bruce Springsteen Bring Out Paul McCartney at Liverpool Concert Eric Church: 'I Enjoy the Antagonistic' Garland Jeffreys Was One of Rock's Most Essential Voices. Where Did He Go? The song is the opening track of Twilight Hours, the 83-track box set's sixth disc, which Springsteen's label says explores 'orchestra-driven mid-century noir'; it reports that the singer-songwriter sees the record as 'romantic, lost-in-the-city songs.' He wrote the record at the same time he wrote his Western Stars album, which came out in 2019. The box set comes out June 27. The E Street Band's Max Weinberg, Patti Scialfa, and Soozie Tyrell back Springsteen up on the song. Other contributors include as producer Ron Aniello and Western Stars collaborators Kaveh Rastegar and Scott Tibbs. 'At one time it was either a double record [with Western Stars] or they were part of the same record,' Springsteen said of the song. 'I love Burt Bacharach and I love those kinds of songs and those kinds of songwriters. I took a swing at it because the chordal structures and everything are much more complicated, which was fun for me to pull off. All this stuff could have come right off of those Sixties albums.' Springsteen previously released a song 'Repo Man,' from the box set. That country-rock song appears on Somewhere North of Nashville, the album's fourth disc, which he recorded at the same time as 1995's The Ghost of Tom Joad. He also released a mariachi song, 'Adelita,' from the box set as well as the tracks 'Blind Spot,' 'Faithless,' and 'Rain in the River.' Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bruce Springsteen Soundtracks Imaginary Western On ‘Faithless'
Bruce Springsteen trots out his best husky twang amid mournful slide guitar lines on 'Faithless,' the third song to be released from his long-awaited collection of unreleased music, Tracks II: The Lost Albums. 'Faithless' is the title track to one of seven unheard, complete albums contained in the set, which arrives June 27 from Columbia. Faithless was previously described as a soundtrack to a 'spiritual Western' film that was never made. It was written during a two-week stint in Florida and recorded largely between the fall 2005 tour in support of Devils & Dust and the April 2006 release of We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. More from Spin: Ed Sheeran's New Album, 'Play,' Coming In September Wolfgang Van Halen Drafts Slash, Danny Trejo For 'The End' Video Evan Dando and the Axis of Weirdness 'This was a really unusual collection of songs,' the Boss admits of composing music for a film that didn't exist. 'You could recognize details and maybe a character or two. But for the most part, I just wrote atmospheric music that I thought would fit.' The album mostly features Springsteen, although producer Ron Aniello and E Street Band members Soozie Tyrell, Lisa Lowell, Curtis King, Jr., Michelle Moore and Ada Dyer appear at times, as do Springsteen's wife Patti Scialfa and their children Evan and Sam. Beyond Faithless, Tracks II is divided into LA Garage Sessions '83, Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, Somewhere North of Nashville, Inyo, Twilight Hours and Perfect World. Somewhere North of Nashville features 'country combos with pedal steel,' Inyo includes 'richly woven border tales' and Twilight Hours is 'orchestra-driven, mid-century noir.' As for Perfect World, it is said to possess an 'arena-ready E Street flavor.' Springsteen and the E Street Band return to the road May 14 in Manchester, England. To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
Telegraph
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Lost albums are usually lost for a reason. But Bruce Springsteen's will be different
It's only April, but Christmas would seem to be coming early for Bruce Springsteen fans, with the bard of blue-collar rock announcing the release of seven previously unheard albums. Granted, it isn't the first time Springsteen has opened the vaults – in 2015, he shared a three-hour-plus extended edition of his 1980 opus The River, crammed with out-takes, alternative versions and an hour-long documentary. But this new project – which he has christened 'Tracks II' – is something else entirely. On June 27, he will share seven 'lost' records made between 1983 and 2018 – each, by the sounds of it, a fully-realised work that, for various reasons, he had chosen not to put out into the world in the moment. If it's a cash-in – and the collected vinyl and CD editions are priced at £265 a-piece – it's one with a difference. Tracks II will, at the very least, provide a unique insight into Springsteen's creative process. Amongst the works soon to see daylight are a 'hip-hop-influenced album from the early 1990s', a country record titled Somewhere North of Nashville, and a 'pop' project called Twilight Hours. In other words, he isn't chasing the cynical music industry trend of scraping the out-takes barrel so much as inviting his audience to enter a sort of Bruce Springsteen parallel dimension – one where he went pop rather than rock and, with that hip hop LP, embraced the funk-master within. For devotees, it is an opportunity to dive headlong into the extended Bruce-o-verse. The news has been met with a spectrum of emotions among Springsteen fans. Many are shocked at the recommended retail price – north of 250 quid, or, in layperson's terms, the first 20 minutes of an Oasis concert. Others are disappointed that Tracks II will seemingly skip a much-rumoured electric version of his stripped-down 1982 masterpiece Nebraska. There is also, it should be pointed out, a Tracks part one – a 1998 collection of b-sides, including his demo of Born in the USA. Whatever their feelings, few fans will be entirely blind-sided by this week's announcement. Springsteen has long hinted at the existence of a vast trove of shelved work. In his 2016 autobiography, Born To Run, he recalls putting together an LP with a hip-hop edge immediately after experimenting with synths and a drum machine to write The Streets of Philadelphia for Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (for which he won an Oscar). Springsteen spent a year toiling on the record – only to decide it was the wrong project at the wrong time. Aware that 1987's Tunnel Of Love was regarded by many as too introspective, he wanted to get back to a more anthemic sound. He wrote: 'I had to come to terms with the fact that after my year of work, writing, recording, mixing it was going on the shelf. That's where she sits.' But now he is dusting it down, and what good news that is for Springsteen lovers. It is also confirmation that, to the end, he remains a maverick. What other artist would devote more than a year of their life to a Broadway show, as he did in 2017, or, just this week, guest on a concept record by The Waterboys about Hollywood loose cannon Dennis Hopper? By announcing Tracks II he's ripping up the rule book one more time and for Bruce aficionados willing to pay the admittedly high asking price, the prospect of an entirely new continuum of Springsteen albums is surely a signal that glory days are here again.
