Bruce Springsteen's later-career back catalog

Seeing Bruce Springsteen perform live in the 1970s and early '80s, pre-Born in the U.S.A., could be a life-changing experience. Bruce was the hungry leader of a relentless, turn-on-a-dime R&B band. A burning star streaking across the rock'n'roll sky, he threw his fiery young self into maximum shows full of urgency (to invoke one of his best rhymes) and those wordy, anthemic pleading/strutting urban fairy tales. He was leagues beyond almost everything and everyone else in those days.

- ROBERT BAIRD

The reality of creatives and creativity, however, is that the muse is fickle. No one can hope to function at their highest level of inspiration forever. Since 2002's The Rising—or if I'm being generous, 2020's Letter to You—the once untouchable singing and songwriting dynamo has been floundering through fallow fields. Albums like 2009's Working on a Dream and 2014's High Hopes are at least as forgettable as that earlier low point, the 1992 pairing of Human Touch and Lucky Town, two albums released on the same day.

Most of what's on the new box set, Tracks II: The Lost Albums, was recorded after Bruce had passed the peak of his creativity. These seven albums (though one's more a collection of tracks than a coherent album) and 82 tracks that make up this bounty (the first Tracks set was released in 1998) are the sound of the maturing Springsteen after the waves of passion had passed. It's noticeable here, for example, how female characters are invariably referred to as “wives.” Rosalita and Sandy are distant memories.

A problem for Springsteen completists at least is that the credits on Tracks II are not granular enough. They don't tell us what players are playing on each track or exactly which take of the track you are hearing. Other than Springsteen's own essays, which accompany each album and mention where in his discography these sessions fit, precise dates are lacking.