Bruce Springsteen's Tracks II: The Lost Albums – these are the fourteen songs to listen to first!

Most people looking down the back of their sofa find keys, coins and decomposing Murray Mints.

When Bruce Springsteen does it, he discovers seven fully completed albums recorded between 1983 and 2018, but for a variety of reasons never heard… until now.

Totalling 83 songs in all, they're being released this Friday as part of the Tracks II: The Lost Albums box-set, which in Ireland will set you back around €254.99 for the CD version and €299.99 for the 9LP vinyl one.

As a further sweetener, the respective boxes also include a 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring rare archival photos, liner notes on each lost album from essayist Erik Flannigan and a personal introduction on the project from Springsteen himself.

“The Lost Albums were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” Bruce reflects. “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.”

If you decide to splash out it'll be money extremely well spent with literally not a duff track among them.

It's a somewhat daunting amount of music to dive into, so let us get you started by picking a couple of highlights from each...

L.A. Garage Sessions ‘83
Recorded in between Nebraska and Born In The U.S.A., the pick of these relatively lo-fi recordings is ‘County Fair’, which rivals ‘The River’ in the melancholic nostalgia department. The lack of studio frills means that this is Bruce at his vocally grittiest. It suits him…

While the embryonic version of ‘My Hometown’ is worthy of a mention, the 18-track collection’s other standout is ‘Richfield Whistle’, an Irish-flavoured lament which could have been sung by Civil War soldiers. Stunning.

Street Of Philadelphia Sessions
Steve Van Zandt told Hot Press that he's had numerous rows with Bruce over the songs he's chosen not to release. How The Boss has managed to sit on ‘Blind Spot’ for this long is a mystery of Bermuda Triangle-style proportions. As bruised and battered as ‘Streets Of Philadelphia’ itself, it finds Bruce meditating on the human condition to the accompaniment of shuffling hip hop beats.

A love song of the tenderest variety, ‘The Little Things’ strays into lullaby territory with its half-whispered sweet nothings. If lines like “She unbuttoned my shirt/ And whispered ‘Just close your eyes’” don’t set your heart a-flutter, nothing will.

Faithless
Mainly recorded in 2005 after Bruce had come off the Devils & Dust tour, this “long-lost film soundtrack to a movie that was never made” is perhaps the new old LP which adds most to the Boss’ canon. I can’t stop listening to the instrumental ‘My Master’s Hand (Theme)’, which starts with some delicate guitar picking and gradually builds towards an epic Ennio Morricone-style climax.

‘All God's’ Children’ is a country ‘n’ boogie stomper in the grand tradition of Creedence Clearwater Revival with Bruce in Baptist preacher mode.

Somewhere North Of Nashville
Recorded simultaneously in 1995 with The Ghost Of Tom Joad, this is Bruce paying tribute to the honky-tonk, rockabilly and booze-fuelled country shitkickers he was exposed to as a kid. The pedal steel guitar is at its most prominent on ‘Delivery Man’, with The Boss hauling a lorry load of squawking chickens.

The pedal steel also twangs big time on ‘Poor Side Of Town’, which finds Bruce softly intoning “Welcome back, baby” to a former lover who’s learned that life on the right side of the tracks can be just as crushing.

Inyo
Written during the 1990s when Bruce road journeyed across the southern border states, this is for the most part just him and his gently strummed guitar. On ‘Inya’ itself, we get to meet “The children of the Queen of Angels” in a song that conjures up the most vivid of desert images.

The more expansive ‘Adelita’ features swelling mariachi brass and a heavenly choir of angels juxtaposing with Bruce’s impassioned growl.

Twilight Hours
Written in tandem with 2019’s Western Stars – you can tell! – this twelve-tracker nods furiously to Messrs. David and Bacharach on the opening ‘Sunday Love’, which is a real warm duvet of a song.

The aforementioned songwriting duo’s influence is also keenly felt on ‘Follow The Sun’, a close bossa nova cousin of their '60s masterpiece, ‘Do You Know The Way To San Jose?’. Bruce clearly does…

Perfect World
The closest the box gets to a full-blown E Street Band album, this ten tracker is perfection from ‘Hungry Heart’-esque start ('I’m Not Sleeping’) to uplifting countryfied finish (‘Perfect World’).

Go fill your Brooooooce boots!

Also out tomorrow is the 20-track Selections From The Lost Albums: Tracks II