"The Lost Albums" unpacked (pt 1)

35 years of Springsteen castoffs — from "Born In the USA" to the present — complicate his narrative. That's a good thing. My notes on "LA Garage Sessions '83" & the "drum loop album."

*This series began last week with Springsteen at 75

The seven-LP set Tracks II: The Lost Albums gets released a week from Friday — finally!— after the string of teaser tracks that’ve been doled out over the past couple months. The collection explores Springsteen’s unreleased, albeit frequently bootlegged, output over the years from 1983 to 2018, illuminating his evolution as a working artist and restless songwriter. It’s a lot, and it’s filled with gems.

I’ll do this in a few posts in the run up to the release. Below find my song-by-song unpacking of the first two albums in the set. I’ll have more in the coming days.

I wish I heard these “albums” — they aren’t all finished works, strictly speaking — in the eras during which they were recorded, especially those dating back to the ‘80s and ‘90s. It would’ve helped me appreciate Springsteen’s output during that period more fully.