The Lost Albums’ Box Set

After years of rumor and speculation, Bruce Springsteen has finally announced plans for Tracks II: The Lost Albums. The massive box set, which arrives June 27, features seven complete records that Springsteen recorded between 1983 and 2018, but wound up shelving. Some of the material was re-cut for other projects, but there are an astounding 74 songs on the set that have never been heard anywhere. For a preview, check out “Rain in the River.”

Taken as a whole, Tracks II: The Lost Albums represents a fascinating alternate history of Springsteen’s career over the past 35 years. “The Lost Albums were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” Springsteen says in a statement. “I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.”

Tracks II begins with L.A. Garage Sessions ’83, which Springsteen recorded in the interim between Nebraska and Born In The U.S.A. It continues with Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, which has been informally known for years as the “Drum Loop” album.

Somewhere North of Nashville was cut in May 1995, shortly after his brief reunion with the E Street Band documented in the movie Blood Brothers. Inyo, meanwhile, came to life while Springsteen was on the road promoting The Ghost of Tim Joad between 1995 and 1997. Perfect World spotlights several songs he wrote with longtime collaborator Joe Grushecky throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and pairs them with other unreleased songs from that era.

The songs on Faithless were recorded in 2005 and 2006 for a film that has yet to be made. And Twilight Hours was created at the same time as Western Stars in 2018, and is essentially a companion album.

These albums are all quite sonically different from each other. The one thing they have in common is that Springsteen recorded them largely at home studios, a practice he started in 1982 with Nebraska.

“The ability to record at home whenever I wanted allowed me to go into a wide variety of different musical directions,” Springsteen says in a statement. A press release announcing the packaging notes that “sonic experimentation takes the form of film soundtrack work (for a movie that was never made) on Faithless, country combos with pedal steel on Somewhere North of Nashville, richly-woven border tales on Inyo, and orchestra-driven, mid-century noir on Twilight Hours.”

A great deal of the music on Tracks II was recorded in the Nineties. His only official albums that decade were the twin 1992 releases Human Touch and Lucky Town, and 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad. But it turns out he was much more productive than most fans knew. “I often read about myself in the 1990s as having some ‘lost period,’” Springsteen says in a promotional video for for Tracks II. “Not really. I was working the whole time.”

The box set didn’t start formally coming together until the pandemic forced Springsteen off the road in 2020. “What I did during that period of time was I finished everything I had in my vault,” Springsteen said. “For one reason or another, something I felt was missing from some of them, or they just didn’t feel complete at the time.”

The complete track listing for Tracks II: The Lost Albums.

LA Garage Sessions ’83

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions

Faithless

Somewhere North of Nashville

Inyo

Twilight Hours

Perfect World