Written by Alex Biese
Bruce Springsteen has never been known to take the easy path – or the obvious one.
After making his name as a guitar slinger in the Jersey Shore bar scene his debut album, 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., found him working in a singer/songwriter mode without any six-string heroics to be heard. After taking the world by storm with the 1984 blockbuster album Born in the U.S.A., he pivoted to the complex romantic terrain of 1987’s Tunnel of Love. And, at a time when many of his peers are closing up shop on farewell tours, Springsteen and his E Street Band remain a live force to be reckoned with, delivering masterclass marathons around the world.
All this is to say, the latest release from Springsteen is unconventional but in its own way consistent with his 50-plus years of singular artistic vision. With a highly anticipated new biopic on the way – Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, due out in October – it would be understandable if the Boss played things safe and released a nostalgic, greatest hits-type of collection.
And to be sure, he’s looking back, but in a far more interesting direction. Tracks II: The Lost Albums is a collection of seven previously unreleased, full-length albums, recorded between 1983 and 2018. It’s a body of work that, as a whole, offers remarkable insight into decades of creative process, a set of music both highly enjoyable and demanding of in-depth study.
There is, of course, some of the sort of material that longtime fans have come to expect and love from Springsteen. LA Garage Sessions ‘83, a low-fi demo collection, bridges the gap between 1982’s stark acoustic album Nebraska and the populist bombast of Born in the U.S.A. The youthful, vigorous set has plenty of rockers, like the exceptional “One Love,” but there’s also a vulnerability and darkness on the edge of everything, such as in the tensions present in the compelling alternate take of the “Born in the U.S.A.” classic “My Hometown.”
Flashing forward, “Perfect World” is neatly of a piece with Springsteen’s output in the last 15 years or so, and it’s a strong enough disc that it’s a bit surprising it wasn’t released on its own as an odd-and-sods new album similarly to 2014’s High Hopes LP. The album-opening “I’m Not Sleeping” is wonderful, deserving of a place in the E Street Band’s live repertoire, with a Wall of Sound shine and wallop that recalls 2009’s Working on a Dream.
On the other hand, Tracks II is also rich with artistic detours and genre experimentations that are sure to captivate many a listener thanks to how atypical they are for Springsteen – and which prove that the conceptual deep dives he’s taken on recent albums such as the high and lonesome story songs of 2019’s Western Stars and the 2024 soul covers album Only the Strong Survive were consistent with work he had been doing behind closed studio doors for decades.
“Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,” like the Oscar-winning song that gives the album its title, is rich with electronic drum loops inspired by the early-’90s sounds of the West Coast hip hop scene. “Somewhere North of Nashville” is a bit of honky tonk business that could be the feisty, unpredictable younger sibling to “Western Stars.” “Inyo” is a set of Woody Guthrie-esque dusty ballads along the lines of 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, featuring occasional mariachi support. “Twilight Hours” is cinematic, string-assisted orchestral adult contemporary that lounges in the same lane as Burt Bacharach and mellower works of Glen Campbell. And “Faithless,” a score for an unreleased film, features a handful of majestic instrumental tracks, pure mood pieces unprecedented in the Springsteen canon, unless you count his Grammy-winning 2007 cover of Ennio Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
Among the remarkable aspects of these albums is how they showcase Springsteen’s dynamic range as a songwriter, even when working outside of his typical wheelhouse. Take the closing two songs on “Inyo,” the powerful, horn-accented “Ciudad Juarez,” and then “When I Build My Beautiful House,” one of the most vulnerable and tender numbers Springsteen has ever released. Few artists could pull off such a combination, much less in the midst of an entire album outside of the genre they’d worked in for decades.
Even the familiar songs found on Tracks II sound fresh here, placed in the context of full bodies of work. The lush, synth-heavy “Secret Garden” was a bit of a sonic outlier when it was released on Greatest Hits in 1995, but on “Streets of Philadelphia Sessions” it sounds like one chapter in a whole story, and the adored deep cut “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart” is a high point in what sounds like a great night at a country bar on “Somewhere North of Nashville.”
Film scores. Hip-hop beats. Mariachi music. Orchestral adult contemporary. None of these, on their own, are sounds one would necessarily expect from Springsteen. But he’s the only artist who could release something so sweeping, epic, unpredictable and interesting as Tracks II.
