Bruce Springsteen’s seven unreleased albums will make up his new box set ‘Tracks II’. The albums will fill the gaps between albums were we thought Bruce wasn’t recording. It turns out, he was recording a lot.
“The lost albums are recorded that were full records, some of which to the point of being mixed and not released,” he says in a new video posted to his socials. “For some reason or another, something I felt was missing from them. They just didn’t feel complete at the time”.
“I often read about myself in the 90s as having some lost period. Really I was working the whole time”.
“Over a period of time I built up a small collection of full albums which for one reason or another never got put out”.
The collection features seven new albums with 83 songs some of which made it to b-sides or later albums but most is unreleased.
Springsteen archivist Erik Flannigan says many of the albums slide inbetween the cracks of the albums we have loved for years.
‘LA Garage Sessions’ was made in 1983. It fits in between ‘Nebraska’ and ‘Born In The USA’.
‘Streets of Philadelphia Sessions’ was, as the title says, was done at the time Bruce recorded ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ for the Tom Hanks movie ‘Philadelphia’. “I said I am going to do some more recording the way I did that which was basically with a drum loop and some synthesizers and I wrote the music like that. I finished it, Bob Clearmountain mixed it, and I didn’t put it out”. These sessions date to late 1983. The album was made when Bruce was taking a break from the E Street Band and trying to figure out what his solo sound was.
‘Somewhere North of Nashville’ was made in simultaneously with The Ghost of Tom Joad and was originally meant to be one record. “I released they just didn’t go together,” Bruce said. “The Joad material was very down and quiet and meditative but in the afternoons I had a bunch of other songs that were lighter and country influenced and simply got recorded at the same time”.
‘Inyo’ was from when Bruce was living in California. “Inyo is a sequel to Joad, made after Joad but in the same style of what Joad is,” Flannigan says.
‘Twilight Hours’ is a companion to 2019’s ‘Western Stars’. Springsteen says it has a 60s feel. Flannigan says Bruce is singing somewhere between Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams.
‘Perfect World’ is a rock record with lots of E Street Band sounds and E Street Band members.
‘Faithless’ is the soundtrack to a movie that was never shot. Bruce was commissioned to write the songs for a film in the early 2000s. “In a very brief period of two to three weeks I wrote all the songs”. But then the movie was never released. “As Hollywood would say, its still in development,” Bruce said.
“What I did during covid, the pandemic, in that period of time what I did was I finished everything that was in my vault. This is Tracks II: The Lost Albums’ but there will be a tracks three.
Watch the video ‘Bruce Springsteen – Inside Tracks II: The Lost Albums’.
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