For many Bruce Springsteen fans, bigger is always better and more is never enough. Springsteen would seem to agree. At the age of 75, he recently concluded his third European tour in as many summers, and it’s just a few short years since his blockbusting Broadway show, in which, night after night, he navigated the peaks and valleys of a life lived with the hood down and the foot on the accelerator.
Such maximalism reaches its apotheosis with Tracks II: The Lost Albums project. Consisting of 83 songs, most never previously released, this boxed set to beat all boxed sets spans the years from the early 1980s up to 2018. It runs the gamut of Springsteenisms, from old-school Jersey-shoreline rock’n’roll to rumpled country pop via delightful diversions into new wave, indie rock – did you ever think Springsteen could sound a bit like New Order? He does here – and cinematic mood music.
It’s a lot, even for Springsteen. And with the nine-disc vinyl package retailing for north of €300, he is charging a premium, too (mirroring his strategy on ticket pricing across recent tours).
But it is also a delightful trip to the dark side of Bruce: seven complete albums brimming with earnestness, emotional generosity, suppressed pain, vulnerability and machismo.
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Tracks II, which follows the 1998 boxed set Tracks, begins with LA Garage Sessions ’83. The recordings capture in granular detail the period between Springsteen’s insular masterpiece Nebraska and the world-conquering bombast of his album Born in the USA, from 1985.
A snapshot of an artist on the cusp of commercial greatness, it begins with the lulling but largely conventional Follow That Dream (which could have slotted into either The River or Nebraska without anyone noticing). But it then veers into unexpected pastures with The Klansman, which strays into 1980s synth pop as it tells the story of a young boy indoctrinated into the Ku Klux Klan.
A different Springsteen is on display on the more pensive Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, the existence of which has long been known by Springsteen fans, who refer to it, quasi-mystically, as the Drum Loop Album because to its use of repeating drum beats.
Its opening track, Blind Spot, sets the pensive tone. Bathed in the same contemplative aura as the singer’s Oscar-nominated single The Streets of Philadelphia, from 1993, it is beautifully moody and largely free of Springsteen’s traditional bombast.
The album is fantastic. So why didn’t he release it in the early 1990s? He reasoned that it “didn’t fit the narrative” he wanted to present at the time. The implication is that he felt it unwise to follow up Tunnel of Love, his largely minimalist 1987 album, with another downbeat record. You can appreciate his logic, but what a shame we’ve had to wait 30 years to hear this fantastic collection.
Still, not all of Springsteen’s experiments are as successful: you can understand why some of the material has lingered in the vault. Somewhere North of Nashville, for example, is a grab-bag of 12 country rock and rockabilly-inspired tunes from 1995 that find Springsteen expurgating his inner Johnny Cash to underwhelming effect.
But while that project feels like a calculated risk that didn’t pay off, Springsteen conjures an effortless magic on Inyo, a late-1990s suite that draws on Latin American music without sounding as if Springsteen is squatting on someone else’s lawn. As pastiche goes, it is both respectful and understated.
He has explained that he recorded the material while touring the folk-oriented Ghost of Tom Joad, only to nix a release because he felt it was too much in the same soulful vein as that previous record. Such is the astuteness that has helped Springsteen stay relevant across six decades.
The sheer volume of music presented by Tracks II often verges on overwhelming. Yet even on an initial listen it’s the moments when Springsteen is going all in rather than trying random genres on for size that leave the deepest impact.
In that regard, the most moving of the seven “albums” is surely Faithless (nothing to do with the 1990s techno titans, more’s the pity). Described by Springsteen as a “meditation on purpose, belief and acceptance”, it was recorded in 2006 for a “spiritual western” movie that never came to fruition.
Its 11 numbers, including several instrumentals, are profoundly moving meditations on life, death and what comes after. Amid an avalanche of outtakes that is all about size, it is these small, quiet songs that hit hardest.
