Tracks II (The Lost Albums)

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History gets harder and harder to make, but never in the long, weird history of popular music has there been an analogue for thi. Doorstop box sets with troves of fan-coveted rarities are de rigueur for any legacy artist, very much including Bruce Springsteen, whose 1998 compilation <i>Tracks</i> dutifully assembled 66 of these—four and a half hours of alternate history to one of rock’s most vaunted narrative. Twenty-seven years later, its nominal sequel is composed of seven full and distinct stand-alone albums recorded between 1983 and 2018, largely unknown to even the most devout Springsteen cryptographer. That something so auspicious and audacious bears the modest title <i>Tracks II</i> is the slyest joke of his career. Individually, these albums demonstrate logical extensions of his classic songwriting that manage to meet that impossible standard—much like outtakes from <i>Darkness on the Edge of Town</i> and <i>The River</i>, which were both full LPs’ worth of parallel material every bit the equal of the latter work, as well as tantalizing, disciplined, and fully realized genre exercises that have no real precedent in his discography. As a whole, the collection begs nothing less than a wholesale reevaluation of an already deeply considered career. A collection of gussied-up home recordings that bridges the gap between 1982’s <i>Nebraska</i> and the 1984 supernova <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i>. An entire album in the subdued synth-pop vein of “Streets of Philadelphia” and “Secret Garden.” (The long-held idea that the ’90s was a relatively fallow period for Springsteen goes very much out the window here.) An atmospheric soundtrack to a shelved western that answers the question, “What if Springsteen transformed himself into Tom Waits?” One pure honky-tonk album and one of jazz standards-style torch song. An album influenced by traditional Mexican music, another of full-bore, more recent vintage rock song. These are the worlds contained within <i>Tracks II</i> and below is a quick and deeply insufficient guide to Springsteen’s most recent epic. <b><i>LA Garage Sessions ’83</i></b> Few words in the rock lexicon are more malleable than “garage.” For Springsteen in 1983, this meant an apartment over the garage of his new home in the Hollywood Hill, where he decamped in the interregnum between 1982’s spare, downcast <i>Nebraska</i> and 1984’s <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i>, which catapulted him from mere rock star to global icon and—forgive us—brand. Probably not a surprise, then, that these semi-polished home demos split the difference between those two vibes: “Don’t Back Down on Our Love” and “Don’t Back Down” have the bones of what could have been a couple of vintage E Street rave-up, while “The Klansman” is a pitch-black song about the son of a proud KKK member learning the rope. <b><i>Streets of Philadelphia Sessions</i></b> While on paper, this may seem similar to <i>LA Garage Sessions</i>—Springsteen working largely alone, at home, with a drum machine—it feels less like rough demos than a collection of fully realized songs that happen to share a specific dynamic. Even adding the word “sessions” into the title feels like a hedge. Springsteen’s slump-busting hit “Streets of Philadelphia,” written for Jonathan Demme’s 1993 film <i>Philadelphia</i>, was pared down to his voice, synth, and drum loops—a combination he found appealing enough to continue for another 10 song, fleshed out in places by members of his early-’90s post-E Street backing band. While “Secret Garden” found its way to a greatest-hits compilation, the others were lost to lore—a whispered-about but never heard “drum loops album.” It’s not the rap or trip-hop album that those whisperers may have been imagining; it i, rather, a logical extension of the two known songs to come out of these recording, only maybe a little hornier. “Maybe I Don’t Know You” has “Brilliant Disguise” DNA in its blood, while “One Beautiful Morning” comes the closest to a more traditional full-band sound. <b><i>Faithless</i></b> In 2005, Springsteen was commissioned to compose the soundtrack to what he has called a “spiritual western” called <i>Faithless</i> by an as-yet-unnamed director, but probably someone we’ve heard of. The movie never wound up being made, but Springsteen held up his end of the bargain, and the result is as revelatory as anything in his career—a mix of moody instrumentals and gospel-tinged Americana ballads that manage to be oddly timeless despite the purported 19th-century setting. At least one song (“All God’s Children”) sounds so much like early-’90s Waits that you may check to make sure you didn’t switch record, while “Where You Going, Where You From” is buttressed by a choir of voices including two of Springsteen’s children. (Note: “Goin’ to California” is <i>not</i> a Led Zeppelin cover, but given the experimental streak on display, you’re excused for letting your imagination run a little wild.) <b><i>Somewhere North of Nashville</i></b> If this set were constructed chronologically, and it is not, this one would have been slotted right after <i>Streets of Philadelphia Sessions</i>. As Springsteen began reactivating the E Street Band in 1995, he shelved what would have been that solo release and began working on <i>The Ghost of Tom Joad</i> and this—a companion album of sorts that took a lighter approach tonally and sonically. <i>Somewhere North of Nashville</i> is a honky-tonk lark with a cast of characters including slide guitarist Marty Rifkin. “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart,” a beloved <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i>-era B-side, gets revisited here a decade later, and sounds more than a little like R.E.M.’s “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville.” This isn’t exactly Springsteen out of his element, but it may have been greeted in 1995 as the exact kind of cutting loose that fans hadn’t seen from him in a long time. <b><i>Inyo</i></b> A largely solo acoustic affair along the lines of <i>Devils & Dust</i>, also recorded around this time, <i>Inyo</i> is tied together by Springsteen’s focus on detailed, character-driven stories about the American Southwest and the Mexican border, combining the stark narrative style forged and perfected on <i>Nebraska</i> with música mexicana flourishes like mariachi bands and string. Thirty years later, stories about the Southern border and the people on either side of it wind up being more resonant and urgent than he could have imagined at the time. <b><i>Twilight Hours</i></b> In a sprawling collection that highlights Springsteen’s career-long comfort with formal genre exercise, the grand Burt Bacharach-style ballads of <i>Twilight Hours</i> may be the most jarring. Not that The Boss doesn’t deserve some downtime to undo his bow tie and nurse his heartache over a stiff martini, but it’s an era that doesn’t have much of an analogue in Springsteen’s canon. Written more or less alongside the long gestation period that eventually birthed <i>Western Stars</i>, songs like the title track, “Late in the Evening,” and “Sunday Love” evoke a smoke-filled lounge that couldn’t have fit anywhere else. <b><i>Perfect World</i></b> .

via Apple Music

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