Bruce Springsteen has ‘finished everything in the vault’ ahead of Tracks II: The Lost Albums release

Bruce Springsteen says he has “finished everything” in his archive of unreleased materials ahead of Tracks II: The Lost Albums.

A total of eighty-three unreleased songs are set to feature on the upcoming Springsteen compilation, Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Confirmation of the release came on April 1, with The Boss’ social media channels sharing what appeared to be a recording sheet. Further details were shared on April 2, with Tracks II: The Lost Albums confirmed to be released later this year. Tracks II: The Lost Albums will release June 27.

Today (April 3), Springsteen has confirmed the compilation will feature eighty-three songs across seven previously unreleased albums. Rain in the River, the compilation’s lead single, is out today. The song is taken from the Perfect World lost album.

Tracks II: The Lost Albums will arrive in limited-edition nine LP, seven CD and digital formats — including packaging for each previously-unreleased record, with 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. A companion set of twenty highlights, Lost and Found: Selections from The Lost Albums, will release alongside the limited edition run.

In a video trailer for the album, Springsteen said: “I often read about myself in the 90s as having some ‘lost period’ or something, not really. I was working the whole time. During the pandemic, what I did for that period of time was finish everything I had in my vault. This is Tracks II: The Lost Albums, records that were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released.

“For one reason or another, something I felt was missing from some of them or they just didn’t feel complete at the time. Over a period of time, I built up a small collection of full albums that, for one reason or another, never got put out.”

Seventy-four of the eighty-two songs to be released on Tracks II: The Lost Albums have never been heard before, the trailer claimed. The seven albums to be released as part of the compilation can be found below.

• LA Garage Sessions ’83 – The symbolic writing and home-recording process Bruce Springsteen employed on Nebraska would extend and grow with his temporary relocation to Southern California in late 1982.
• Streets of Philadelphia Sessions – After a year spent touring his 1992 albums Human Touch and Lucky Town, Bruce Springsteen began writing and recording new material in the fall of 1993 at his home in New Jersey. One of the first songs to emerge from those sessions sounded distinct from his recent work and would take Springsteen’s music all the way to the Oscars: Streets of Philadelphia.
• Somewhere North of Nashville – Bruce Springsteen closed out 1994 thinking he’d finished a new album. Streets of Philadelphia Sessions had expanded the contemporary sound of his Oscar-winning single of the same name, including songs cut with Tommy Sims, Zack Alford and Shane Fontayne from the 1992-93 touring band. But just days into the new year of 1995, Springsteen took an unexpected U-turn and called the E Street Band to New York City to record material for his forthcoming Greatest Hits CD. Barely a week had passed when on January 9, the group – which had not fully reassembled since the 1988 Human Rights Now! tour – found themselves together again in the studio for the first time in ten years.
• Inyo – Borders that divide and legacies born of separation are themes Bruce Springsteen has explored in some of his most cinematic songwriting. Perhaps the first border was the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York, the latter full of wonder, opportunity, and, on occasion, danger when one must ‘make it through the tunnel’ for a ‘meeting with a man on the other side,’ as he sings in 1975’s Meeting Across the River.
• Twilight Hours – Though he didn’t perform any proper concerts, Bruce Springsteen had a highly productive 2010. To the public, the year’s primary output took the form of The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story box set and accompanying film. The double album featured twenty-two previously unreleased songs circa 1977-78 that were finished in Springsteen’s Stone Hill studio in New Jersey between January and July 2010. At that same time and through the spring of 2011, he also recorded demos for songs that would later comprise his critically acclaimed 2019 album Western Stars.
• Perfect World – The Lost Albums includes standalone, finished projects (Streets of Philadelphia Sessions), distinct bodies of work (LA Garage Sessions ’83, Faithless), and what were once intertwined companions to other works (Somewhere North of Nashville, Twilight Hours, Inyo). Perfect World is a little different. “That’s the one thing on this that wasn’t initially conceived as an album, but it was something I put together,” says Springsteen.
• Faithless – A moving meditation on purpose, belief, and acceptance, Faithless strikes a stirring, spiritual note on The Lost Albums. It echoes tone and locations found in other work on the box, particularly Inyo, but with a marked focus befitting its origin. “It was music commissioned for a film that for one reason or another hasn’t been made up to now,” Springsteen explains. “That’s the movie business for you. But I sat with this music for a long time, so, not exactly knowing where the project was going, I decided to release it as a record.”

A full tracklist for all seven albums can be found below.

LA GARAGE SESSIONS ’83

• Follow That Dream
• Don’t Back Down on Our Love
• Little Girl Like You
• Johnny Bye Bye
• Sugarland
• Seven Tears
• Fugitive’s Dream
• Black Mountain Ballad
• Jim Deer
• County Fair
• My Hometown
• One Love
• Don’t Back Down
• Richfield Whistle
• The Klansman
• Unsatisfied Heart
• Shut Out The Light
• Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad)

STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA SESSIONS

• Blind Spot
• Maybe I Don’t Know You
• Something in the Well
• Waiting on the End of the World
• The Little Things
• We Fell Down
• One Beautiful Morning
• Between Heaven and Earth
• Secret Garden
• The Farewell Party

FAITHLESS

• The Desert (Instrumental)
• Where You Goin’, Where You From
• Faithless
• All God’s Children
• A Prayer By The River (Instrumental)
• God Sent You
• Goin’ To California
• The Western Sea (Instrumental)
• My Master’s Hand
• Let Me Ride
• My Master’s Hand (Theme)

SOMEWHERE NORTH OF NASHVILLE

• Repo Man
• Tiger Rose
• Poor Side of Town
• Delivery Man
• Under a Big Sky
• Detail Man
• Silver Mountain
• Janey Don’t You Lose Heart
• You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone
• Stand On It
• Blue Highway
• Somewhere North of Nashville

INYO

• Inyo
• Indian Town
• Adelita
• The Aztec Dance
• The Lost Charro
• Our Lady of Monroe
• El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona)
• One False Move
• Ciudad Juarez
• When I Build My Beautiful House

TWILIGHT HOURS

• Sunday Love
• Late in the Evening
• Two of Us
• Lonely Town
• September Kisses
• Twilight Hours
• I’ll Stand By You
• High Sierra
• Sunliner
• Another You
• Dinner at Eight
• Follow The Sun

PERFECT WORLD

• I’m Not Sleeping
• Idiot’s Delight
• Another Thin Line
• The Great Depression
• Blind Man
• Rain in the River
• If I Could Only Be Your Lover
• Cutting Knife
• You Lifted Me Up
• Perfect World