It’s strange how we can sleep on certain things musically. Atom Heart Mother not being one of those Pink Floyd albums I spin as regularly as it deserves (its ambition let down by realisation perhaps) means that while I’ve listened to David Gilmour’s previous two live albums upon which it featured, I must have dozed off.
Then again, I may not have been the only one. In the same way that Mr Gilmour opted to step outside his usual approach for the recording of Luck and Strange he took the same tact with the live band that he took out on a run of shows to support it: “it was all too robotic, and some people would have been better off in a Pink Floyd tribute band. So I thought we’d get people who are genuinely creative and give them a little more space.” Which had kind of been my feeling listening to Live In Gdansk.
So it was that on Saturday past, with the intensity of this current heatwave bearing down outside, that I found Live at the Circus Maximus was up on that video streaming service named after a South American river. On it went.
Of course, judging by the preamble you know where I’m going here… but being lulled into a drift-off fuelled by heat and IPA during the organ solo, the gear change going into the guitar solo was much harder hitting. Having listened back to previous live takes on it, I still stand by this one being the best to date, no doubt thanks to the addition of guitarist Ben Worsley and drummer Adam Batts to the band.
Anyway, here’s the original and then the latest live version:
Here we are, Wednesday already and closing in on the point at which it’s all downhill to the weekend. With the unseasonably scorching weather lowering – 33/35 degrees plus* in May is a sure sign of a fucked climate – it feels like a suitable moment to take a pause and ask you to lend me your ears once again so that I may share with them those songs that have been occupying my own.
Still Corners – Midnight Driven
Slowdive – No Longer Making Time
Still Corners are a recent discovery for me – via that dreaded combo of streaming service and recommendations. While I’ve since explored a lot of this British / American duo’s music, ‘Midnight Drive’ is one I keep going back to. The same could probably be said for the entirety of Slowdive’s self-titled 2017 comeback album. While I adore their back catalogue, that album just continues to hit the sweet-spot every time, especially when driving in sunny weather. Keeping the vibe going with Blonde Redhead feels like a natural progression…
Blonde Redhead – 23
I’ve surprised myself with the realisation that I’ve not plonked any Blonde Redhead here before. They’ve been a mainstay in my music library for many years now and their album 23 is as close to perfect as they’ve gotten.
Something new from Kurt Vile? I’m always going to be tuning in for that. Wakin On A Pretty Daze is one of those albums that I go back to time and time again and he’s one of those artists that continues to delight with each new release. Philadelphia’s been good to me is about to drop on Friday and ‘Chance to Bleed’ is another cracking tune from the man with the least pleasant adjective for a surname.
Kurt Vile – Chance To Bleed
Louane – Chiens
Girls In Hawaii – Is It Happening Right Now?
I’m lucky enough to live on the part of this cranky island that’s closest to France. So whenever we get a few miles closer to the coast I’m able to pick up RTL2’s FM signal on my car’s radio. Doing so a few weeks back bought Louane’s ‘Chiens’ to my ears where it’s been lodged since. A surprisingly upbeat tune for one dealing with escaping a toxic relationship.
I’d been wondering what Belgium’s Girls In Hawaii were up to – it’s been nine years since their last album and a while since they last toured to support the anniversary of their debut From Here To There it’s been very quiet- and, lo and behold, they’re back in action with a very focused, energised new song and an album dropping in September.
Bruce Springsteen – Atlantic City (Electric Nebraska Version)
Yeah, a little more Springsteen but it’s not like that ever hurt anyone is it? I’ve spent so much time with the recent Nebraska ’82 box that it’s barely back in the record rack before I take it out again. Aside from the wealth of unreleased cuts like ‘On The Prowl’ or ‘Gun in Every Home’ the mythical Electric Nebraska element is a delight. From the off, ditch your expectations – this isn’t a full-band run through of all the album’s tracks. There a subtle, full-band, takes on the title track for example, but a lot of the tracks are power-trio style blast throughs and while ‘Atlantic City’ has long been played live by the full band, this version adds a different nuance, some twists to the lyrics and keeps the harmonica part that would be replaced by a synth line when performed later.
Elbow – Kindling
The more I delve into Elbow the happier I am. Much like Wilco, they’ve been consistently releasing great albums with flourishes of excellence and Guy Garvey remains a brilliant lyricist able to conjure up a landscape with the slightest brush stroke: “Then my telephone shakes into life and I see your name, and the wheat fields explode into gold either side of the train.”
*celcius, of course. Or 91 for those with their own made up temperature scale.
While several of the albums that make up Tracks II: The Lost Albums comprise songs from separate sessions, Perfect World is the only one not set out as a stand-alone album, more a collection of songs recorded over a near-twenty year period and set should aside just such an occasion arise. It’s also the album in the collection that the marketing was able to highlight as the most ‘obvious’ Bruce set, one that evokes the ‘E Street flavoured rock’ that would make it an easier sell, perhaps.
Except, it’s not. Not really. In contrast to Tracks, where the bulk of the material was band-backed, Tracks II is very much a series of albums that find Springsteen exploring his solo voice and sound. Perfect World is no exception and the presence of the E Street Band is minimal. There’s no ‘lost’ full band songs from the post-reunion sessions or those aborted pre-Rising recordings. Perhaps those will grace Tracks III. Fittingly enough, then, Perfect World sits in the same category as the final disc in the first Tracks in as much as while there’s nothing fundamentally bad about these songs, there’s nothing here that makes you feel like it would’ve made a stronger inclusion on the album from whose sessions it was born. And, much like that disc, most of Perfect World finds Bruce working either solo or with ‘other’ musicians.
It’s easy to see why, in the build up to its release marketing for Tracks II made so much of Perfect World being the box’ ‘rock’ album – perhaps to convince anyone sitting on the fence about splashing out a mortgage instalment on the package that there’d be a ‘business as usual’ set to soothe. But because it’s so typical Brooooce, it’s pretty ‘meh’ as a result. Again, there’s nothing on Perfect World that’s particularly bad, more that it feels like Boss on Autopilot for the most part. Oh, and it’s very much a Ron Aniello production too… to the point that if you were to ask AI to create a late-period Bruce Springsteen song, you’d probably end up with something similar to many of the songs here. They make all the right noises, hit all expected tropes but lack that bit of magic that would make them genuinely memorable.
The opening volley – ‘I’m Not Sleeping’ (which had the fitting misfortune to arrive while I was battling one of my perennial bouts of insomnia), ‘Idiot’s Delight’ and ‘Another Thin Line’ are all cowrites with Joe Grushecky and while I’m glad to be able to hear them, they’re just that – great Joe Grushecky songs of the heartland rock variety. ‘Rain In The River’ may well be among the hardest-hitting beats Springsteen has put to tape and songs like ‘The Great Depression’ and ‘Perfect World’ are all pleasant enough. ‘If I Could Only Be Your Lover’ is one of the albums outliers in as much as it’s a bruising, burnished, late-career gem that I’ve had on repeat many a time since – it feels surprisingly at home with the material from Streets of Philadelphia Sessions – and those songs that feature E Street Band members (there’s no full E Street Band backed material here) are immediately propelled by their involvement and, as is often the case with that fourth disc on Tracks too, make you wonder what they could’ve bought to the rest of the material here.
Look, I’m no E Street purist but if there’s a group of musicians that you’ve got such undeniable natural chemistry with that bring even your weaker songs to a new level… then songs with session musicians or, worse, where your producer plays all the instruments directly into the board instead, are going to suffer in comparison. Especially when they’re grouped together on the same disc.
Least: Blind Man
Perfect World was the first of the box I cued up after Philadelphia Sessions and it kept me company on a commute or two. Except for ‘Blind Man’. Aside from my disappointment that it wasn’t a cover of Aerosmith’s 1994, I never found a hook in it enough to keep me away from that ‘skip’ button.
Most: You Lifted Me Up
Now this is much better. Any song where you can spot Max Weinberg keeping the beat from the word go is, if you’ll excuse the link, going to be lifted up immediately. Same rule for Steven Van Zandt’s backing vocal harmony. Plus, beneath my cynical and sarcastic wrapping I’m a soppy bastard at heart and these seemingly light, un-laboured and genuine odes to love like this that Springsteen does so well like are going to sit well with me.
Western Stars, when it arrived in 2019 it was the fruition of a years-long process that – judging by the evidence afforded by the interviews and commentary around Tracks II: The Lost Albums – began in 2010 when Springsteen began working with Ron Aniello. It went through many iterations and sessions before Springsteen found the style he was looking for. Some of those sessions found their way to one of the other ‘lost’ albums on this set, Somewhere North Of Nashville. A huge glut of them, however, have been rounded up onto the sprawling Twilight Hours.
Perhaps the most unexpected of the set, this one finds Springsteen leaning fully into mood, orchestration, and emotional understatement. Where Western Stars still carried traces of pop structure and narrative propulsion, Twilight Hours drifts instead through late-night spaces – hotel bars, empty streets, the moments when reflection replaces momentum. It’s music shaped as much by atmosphere as by songcraft.
Stylistically, Twilight Hours draws heavily from mid-century orchestral pop and noir-tinged balladry, with lush strings, restrained rhythms, and the influence of classic crooners and cinematic arrangements drip off the album by the bucket load. How much you’ll enjoy it depends, really, on how much you enjoy the classic Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs of the 1960s that Bruce is gunning for here.
Sadly, for me, that’s not a lot. This is the set that it’s taking me the longest to get into and find pleasure in. Where Springsteen has dabbled with ‘genre’ in the past, it’s always felt that his songs have been stripped and arranged to suit whereas here, like the weaker moments of Western Stars, it often feels like Bruce has written a bulk-order of ‘Rhinstone-cowboy-style’ songs and Aniello has slapped as many schmatlzy effects as his pro-tools could cope with. It too often leans into pastiche rather than style.
However, much like Western Stars, there are moments when it really works. It’s still a fucking Bruce Springsteen album after all. Many of the arrangements are superb, and Springsteen’s vocals, in their subdued longing, have never sounded richer or fuller as he explores themes of aging, regret, and emotional distance. For me, though, on an hour that spans nearly an hour, it’s a bit of a hard, monotonous slog. If I wanted to listen to Burt Bacharach, I’d listen to Burt Bacharach.
Least: I’ll Stand By You
I could’ve gone for any number of songs here. The overly trite and obvious Sunday Love or September Kisses…. I mean, this is the guy that put a lyric like ‘And she’s so pretty that you’re lost in the stars. As you jockey your way through the cars’ onto one of the least memorable songs on Born To Run, crooning some of the most banal shite on some of these songs. However, ‘I’ll Stand By You’ takes the ‘odd one out’ card for not only was it a bit of a flat-note when previously randomly included on the Blinded By The Light soundtrack, here it falls just as flat. A lullaby previously written for and offered up for a Happy Rotter soundtrack, it’s overly saccharine and out of place here too.
Most: High Sierra
One of those songs that feels closest to classic Bruce but delivered with an unexpected tenderness. This is one of, and the finest, those moments where the concept, the style and the song all match up and soar. While it could perhaps do with a little trimming, it’s a fantastic narrative and Story Time Bruce is always going to get more points than the Insipid, Elevator Music Bruce that turns up on too many of these songs.
A Bruce Springsteen film soundtrack. Not just one track, mind. An entire set of songs. Original songs, theme, the lot. That’s what we have with Faithless, the fifth album (chronologically) on Tracks II: The Lost Albums.
Artists creating the entire soundtrack to a film is nothing new – even a quick scan through my record rack will find Mark Knoplfer’s Local Hero, Air’s Virgin Suicides and Eddie Vedder’s Into The Wild and that’s just a few that bounce into mind. This wouldn’t even be Bruce’s first dabble in film either – Streets of Philadelphia, The Wrestler, Dead Man Walkin’ and Limbo all got dedicated songs. But who, or what, could get the man they call Boss to take a break from counting his money and posting duck-face selfies on the ‘gram to pen an entire soundtrack and would it be any cop? We have the answer to both of those questions that, until this archival release, nobody had really thought to ask.
The first question first. Odds are that the set of songs Bruce was commissioned “back in the early 2000s” to write for a western that dealt with some spiritual issues and since seemingly shelved (or, ‘still in development’) is Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Thomas Eidson’s ‘St. Agnes’ Stand’ – the story of a reluctant hero on the run who saves a nun and a group of children from Apache Indians. The theme fits and Scorsese is one of the very few filmmakers with enough clout to get Springsteen to commit to a full score.
The second question is answered with a resounding ‘fucking hell, yes.’
If we look at where Faithless sits on The Bruce Springsteen Timeline, this sits immediately after Devils & Dust. Springsteen is deep in his most stripped, inward-facing mode, having again walked away from stadium expectations to follow up The Rising and clearly uninterested in returning to them just yet – he’d follow Devils & Dust and the Faithless sessions with We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions before eventually returning to his ‘rock’ voice with Magic. Heard in that context, Faithless feels like a continuation – maybe even a further stripping-back – of the same instincts but with a muse not of his own. He’s marrying his own exploration of America with that of Scorsese and Eidson and the album’s meditative, frontier-adjacent tone lines up neatly with the novel’s long, spiritual road through devastation and doubt. What makes this set’s inclusion on Tracks II such an unexpected gift is that even divorced from that context, the music still feels cinematic, wide, patient, and morally weighty. All the ingredients of a bloody good Springsteen album.
What’s most striking about the album, even now after listening to it more times than I can count, is how open it is. Not unfinished (Ron Aniello later polished up the mostly-Bruce tracks with some upright bass, drums and strings), not tentative, but spacious in a way Springsteen rarely allows himself. The songs across Faithless don’t rush to fill the silence or underline their meaning. They sit, they linger, they leave room for the listener to wander. It’s closer in spirit to the kind of slow-burn atmosphere you’d expect from Tom Waits at his most skeletal, or from the desolate, morally heavy film scores Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have made their signature, than to anything in Springsteen’s traditional rock lineage. Again, given where these sessions sit – recorded in two weeks before any film was shot (if it ever was) during a short spell in Florida with his daughter – right after Devils & Dust but somehow sharing some of Inyo‘s spirit and even the ‘man wracked with self-doubt’ themes of Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.
Like many great soundtrack albums, Faithless actually works much better as a standalone piece than it probably has any right to. Again, I’m thinking back to the likes of Eddie Vedder’s Into The Wild and even Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s She’s The One – in these instances, with the instrumental cues fleshed out just a little more and shod of the repetitiveness of the ‘theme’ these could have been great albums (as the later release of Angel Dream proved for the latter). In the case of Faithless, though, that’s not necessary. While four of the eleven tracks are instrumental – it was meant to be a soundtrack after all – this could happily sit within Springsteen’s canon. An albeit brief but quietly compelling release: open, austere, and – freed from the pressure of being a studio album proper – unconcerned with being liked.
Least:My Master’s Hand (Theme)
This is a cheap ‘get out’ of a Least pick. Simply because, by dent of being a soundtrack, there’s a little repetition with ‘My Master’s Hand (Theme).’ It’s a lovely tune, don’t get me wrong, but only two tracks before hand we have the much more beautiful ‘My Master’s Hand’ making the ‘(Theme)’ version a little superfluous in this sense.
Most: Faithless
There’s a lot to love on Faithless – I could just as easily have dropped ‘Let Me Ride’ or ‘God Sent You’ in here but I keep coming back to the album’s title track as my favourite. A slow, mediative and atmospheric track that rewards with each repeated listen.
In a very selfish and inconsiderate manner, Bruce Springsteen decided to wait until I’d finished my Least and Most series on his work to announce the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums containing SEVEN entire albums pulled from the vaults.
Except… that’s not entirely true. Of the seven albums one is a mass collection of demos, one an actual album that was ready for release and then shelved, a soundtrack album that never went further than recording, a couple of ’90s album projects that got rounded out by songs added during the ‘boxset’ project, the remainder of a glut of songs recorded while finding the voice / angle for Western Stars and a disc of holdover ‘rock’ songs. However, as these have been packaged, labelled up and marked as albums proper, the Boss has forced my hand here.
There’s a lot of music here. An embarrassment of riches for Springsteen fans. Almost too much to be consumed and considered in one go. Whereas Tracks was pared down from six, to five and eventually a four-disc, 69-song offering, the aforementioned seven albums here (the disc number varying according to format) offer up 83 songs of varying vintage and quality. This being Springsteen, aside from a couple of howlers, the quality here barely drops below solid, often hits dizzyingly high levels and frequently contains moments that make you wonder how they stayed gathering dust for this long. While the marketing around the release contained the suggestion that each of these finds Springsteen playing in genres and sounds unexpected, the truth is that’s only so much hype: taken in context with where these sit chronologically in his ‘canon’ catalogue, they make not only make perfect sense but provide a fascinating insight into his working process.
So, that’s the intro outta the way. Let’s get into it…
LA Garage Sessions ’83
Of the lot, this was the album I was most familiar with ahead of release. I’d mumbled before about the bootleg of a lot of these songs and where they fall in the great Bruce Springsteen Timeline. However, as a quick recap: with most of the songs for Born In The USA written and recorded by mid ’82, the group of songs from his original working tape that he was least happy with the band versions of, was released ‘as is’ as Nebraska. While fully committed to the material and the voice, I think it’s fair to say the positive critical reception to these caused Springsteen to pause for a moment on the big rock record that was in progress. It probably didn’t help that he and Steven Van Zandt had fallen out over creative input and the latter had left the E Street Band.
Holing up in his LA home and thinking a closer-in-approach to Nebraska tact would be the logical next step without dealing with the hassles of band relationships, Springsteen put down another huge draft of material that – having been circulated for years – is now with on LA Garage Sessions ’83.
These are a fascinating and mostly brilliant group of songs. There’s a clear difference between the aesthetic of Nebraska while the song writing matter remains closer to that and his former work than the more direct Born In The USA material, it’s undoubtedly the bridge the between the two sides as well as a massive informer of his work beyond his stadium-ready record. Most importantly, the rounded out sound here shows him taking more confident swings to creating a distinct ‘solo’ Springsteen sound.
While the repetitiveness of the overall disc – there are 18 songs here and three of them start with that ‘Sir, I am a pilgrim and a stranger in this land’ line- the frequent excessive use of reverb and occasionally clumsy synth – means that it’s not going to be a perfect ‘album’ or even lost classic, it is one of the best in this collection and essential listening for a Springsteen fan as a set of what-ifs and roads not taken. For while the production and sound gets gnawing, the songs here are, frankly, fucking excellent and there’s very little to mark out song wise as ‘meh’ or ‘least’.
But, that being whole point of this series…
Least: My Hometown
Ugh… I know! But hear me out: it would be unfair to say ‘this version isn’t as good as it is on Born In The USA‘ because these are obviously demos and would suffer in comparison. But it’s presented here as part of this project and that’s what I’m marking against. It’s just that, for me, the delivery of this song kills it. This is a mature subject matter and yet he delivers it in a weird horse-whisperer rasp that’s not present elsewhere. Again, though, still a bloody solid song.
Most:Unsatisfied Heart
This is actually a pretty tough call. Taking the songs on an individual basis there’s so fucking much gold here. ‘Shut Out The Light,’ for example, has always been one of his best. The provocative ‘Klansman’ is a slice of fried gold, ‘Richfield Whistle’ has long been a favourite character study, ‘One Love’ is a fucking belter and many of these tunes could have been a standout if revisited later in his career instead of left behind as Springsteen continued his perpetual forward motion. ‘Unsatisfied Heart,’ though, is a real stand out for me. It’s as complete as it gets – it’s staggering that while some of the songs from this session were short-listed for inclusion on various Born In The USA iterations, this was never among them. Another of his great character studies of a man whose past catches up to him, ‘Unsatisfied Heart’ straps a killer chorus to the ‘Sir I’m a pilgrim’… line in a song that explores the overall theme of the ‘album’ and gives it a full and glorious melody that, while not given a nod on Bruce’s immediate next, definitely feels like a nod both in substance and vibe on Tunnel of Love.
It doesn’t take a massive leap of the imagination to grasp that, along with talking about music in a manner that may not be that healthy, I have a bit of a soft spot for music from the 1990s.
Somewhere between returning from summer and being laid out by this year’s flu virus I had the utmost pleasure of reconnecting with Geoff Stephen to do just that – talk about music and, specifically, five ‘essential’ albums from 1994. While I could’ve run down a list from any year of that decade – as my now-stalled ‘albums of my years‘ series will attest – ’94 is a pretty key year for that music I love and so many of those artists that I love dropped some stone-cold classics that year.
You can check it out here, should you so wish, and be sure follow the1002ndalbum podcast wherever you usually get such thing for some great takes from other guests and some great themes.
Here we are slap in the middle of La Rentrée and with the chaos and confusion it triggers subsiding somewhat and the rain lashing down like a cow pissing on a rock outside to signify that summer is well and truly in the rearview, it feels like it’s finally time to crack my knuckles, blow the proverbial dust off my keyboard and get back to this and talk about what’s been filling my ears.
It’s certainly been a while. In many ways it’s been the Summer of Springsteen* with both the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums, the promise of Tracks III and the approaching drop of Nebraska ’82. But we’ll get to that later. I spent, as is often the case, a large part of my summer in France. Booked before the results of a DNA test revealed a large part of ‘me’ heralds from the exact region we visited, I spent a pleasurable couple of weeks driving around Brittany and Normandy with the occasional stop for a bit of record shopping thrown in amongst sampling the local cider and IPA. I’m gonna start the ball rolling with a track from Beach House – a band that I’d been listening to increasingly on that streaming service beginning with S for some time so when I found Once Twice Melody on sale for €15 I wasn’t going to say ‘non, merci.’
Beach House – New Romance
Mew – Am I Wry? No
Beach House sit in that category ‘dream pop’ category that serves as a catch all for those songs with pop melodies wrapped in atmosphere and sonic textures and feels like a lush, blanketed bridge to shoegaze. Mew are one of those bands who, like Beach House, appear so often in such playlists.
MC Solaar – Caroline
I had the pleasure of catching up with Geoff Stephen over at The 1002nd Album Club recently and, while discussing something that’ll appear soon, he mentioned that MC Solaar’s debut – Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo – was listed in ‘1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.’ It’s a brilliant album and MC Solaar, with his ridiculously smooth flow and delivery, combination of hip-hop, acid jazz and soul proved that French music wasn’t all derivative Johnny Halliday slop.
George Harrison / The Beatles – All Things Must Pass (Demo)
In amongst the hype about the upcoming reissues of the first three Anthology volumes and the ‘new’ fourth instalment, I was flicking through Anthology 3 and stumbled on this little gem. Having spent time with Dylan and the Band at the end of ’68, Harrison found is interest in the guitar and his approach to songwriting revitalised – only for songs like this, and others, to receive little interest from Lennon and McCartney. This early demo – from Feb ’69 – and included on Anthology 3 (hence the dual artist attribution) is a beautiful sign of just what a magnificent songwriter he’d become.
Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe!
Eddie Vedder – Room at the Top
Listening to the radio while driving through France has become something of a tradition over the last few years that we’ve been doing so. Unfortunately, I think it’s time to find a new station as RTL2 seem to have gotten stuck with only a handful of songs that get played on each DJ’s show. So, in amongst daily blasts of the new Indochine song and uncensored versions of Nirvana’s ‘Rape Me’ it became clear that the French are currently obsessed with Lola Young’s – admittedly brilliant – ‘Messy’ and Chappel Roan’s also brilliant ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ It’s a gloriously well-crafted song and, as Graham over at Aphoristic pointed out, she’s got Dan Nigro in her songwriting corner and they’re just pushing out gold. Makes me think of that glorious period of Madonna’s collaboration with Patrick Leonard.
I mentioned a while back how I’d been enjoying ‘Bad Monkey’ and its soundtrack of Tom Petty covers. Eddie Vedder’s take on Room at the Top (accompanied by his Earthlings band rather than his previous solo acoustic take) is an absolute blast of the great stuff.
And, finally….
Bruce Springsteen – Born In The USA (Electric Nebraska)
Strap yourself in, here we go: it’s Springsteen time. I mean: holy fuck. Aside from having given us SEVEN previously unreleased albums earlier this year (although really you can only apply that to two of the discs properly), Bruce recently dropped the bombshell we thought we’d never get: Electric Nebraska. Long rumoured and shrouded in myth – Springsteen, fresh from writing and recording with a home four (or eight) track, took said songs to the studio to, as always intended, work up with the E Street Band. Some of them worked, some didn’t, some evolved down the line and ten of them simply sounded perfect they way they were on that beat-up cassette in his back pocket and were released on the stark, beautiful Nebraska. Now, as we near release of ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ – the film of the book documenting that period – the fabled Electric Nebraska has been found in the vault, presumably right at the back along with the material coming on Tracks III, and will be released as part of a larger package next month.
To whet our appetite we get the Electric Nebraska version of Born In The USA. It’s rare that a song floors me but this, along with the news of the box, did that. Of the three versions we now have of the song – the other two being the famed Rambo Bruce version the ’82 demo, acoustic blues take on Tracks (and revisited on the reunion tour documenting Live in New York City – this is easily the best take on it. Like the Boss says in the video trailer, it sounds nothing like any of this other electric songs.
That’s it, for now. As I finish working my way through the Tracks II: The Lost Albums to restart the ‘Least and Most’ series, I’ll leave you with another Springsteen song and a highlight from that mammoth collection that shares the same vintage.
Background:
I’ve had the Ben Folds song ‘Fred Jones Part 2’ in my head on repeat recently thanks to using the phrase ‘it’s time’ a little too often and it got me thinking back to how bloody good an album it came from and that, maybe, it was time to dust off both my copy of Rockin’ The Suburbs and this format.
Ben Folds was, of course, previously of the Ben Folds of Ben Folds Five, the band that became one of the defining indie alt-rock acts of the ’90s despite the fact that there were only two other members (“I think it sounds better than Ben Folds Three.”).
Their first self-titled album in 1995 was a bit of a slow burn but got them noticed and established as the kind of band Pitchfork wanted you to like (Pitchfork back then, not now). They had a knack for writing songs that felt immediately catchy and singable but with a bit more emotional weight than expected ‘Underground’ and ‘Philosophy’ became cult hits, but it wasn’t until their 1997 follow-up, the brilliant Whatever and Ever Amen, that the train pulled out of the station.
Toward the end of 2000, after a particularly gruelling tour behind 1999’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner – a period which Folds later recalled as “financially and career-wise a disaster” – and the few recording sessions for a new album went nowhere, Ben Folds Five took a break.
At the time, I was aware of none of this. While I’d hear the band’s name from time to time and may have even caught ‘Brick’ on MTV or MTV2 it wasn’t until 2001 – V2001 in fact – when I caught Ben Folds’ act at a festival that I got hooked.
Rockin’ The Suburbs:
When Ben Folds released Rockin’ the Suburbs in the fall of 2001, it felt like a sharp, sardonic commentary on everything that was wrong—and right—with the then modern world. He was stepping out of the shadow of Ben Folds Five and looking to establish himself as a solo artist, and while there’s not a huge amount of distance between this and his records with the band, it’s fair to say that this album is as much about his personal evolution as it is about the cultural moment it was released in.
>Now, almost 25 years later, Rockin’ the Suburbs remains a fascinating artefact. Listening to it again in 2025 gives me the strange feeling I get when – per this weekend – I see examples of my early mobile phones and iPod behind glass in the Science Museum. The songs are still great but there’s something very much of a time capsule about the album. In many ways, it feels like a bridge between two eras: the post-grunge hangover of the late ’90s and the digitalised, millennial angst of the early 2000s. For all of that, though, there’s something curiously timeless about its blend of sharp piano lines, quirky pop structures, and deeply personal yet universally relatable lyrics.
Take the title track, a brash declaration of suburban boredom that captures a distinctly white-collar angst. But, while his tongue is very much in cheek with his complaints of ‘being male, middle-class, and white’ could “I can feel that someone’s blasting me with hate, and bass, Sendin’ dirty vibes my way, ‘cause my great, great, great, great granddad made someone’s great, great, great, great, granddaddies slaves” make the grade in 2025 even if they are dripping in sarcasm? Possibly not – let alone the mention of ‘my new CD’ – but it’s still a fucking great song.
But while it’s a title track, it’s not indicative of the whole, it’s not all sarcasm and irony. Beneath the punchy, piano-driven hooks, there’s a vulnerability that permeates songs like “The Luckiest” —a deeply heartfelt ballad about love and fate. It’s a perfect example of Folds’ ability to balance the playful with the profound that’s most definitely soundtracked a few hundred first dances at weddings around the world.
The album’s strength, in fact, lies in its ability to walk that razor-thin line between comedy and pathos. Tracks like ‘Not the Same’ and ‘Zak and Sara’ (a favourite then and a favourite now) combine the lightheartedness of pop music with deeper, more introspective themes: loss, longing, and self-realisation. Nor is there any denying Ben Folds owns a copy of Billy Joel’s The Stranger.
Looking back, Rockin’ the Suburbs was too quirky for mainstream radio and too accessible for the alt scene that was ditching pianos for turntables. In the years since, it’s become one of those cult classics that many of us – judging by what I’ve picked up around the likes of Reddit etc – still find ourselves coming back to. It’s both a snapshot of early-2000s indie-pop sensibilities and a timeless reflection on the confusion of early adulthood.
Yes, you could say there’s perhaps too much reliance on the “quirky piano guy” trope. But that’s also part of the charm; Folds was, and is, the guy who could craft a song about a mental breakdown (‘Rockin’ the Suburbs’) and then immediately follow it up with a melodic love song that feels both grand and intimate (‘The Luckiest’) or a very touching lament on the quiet, inescapability of time (‘Fred Jones Part 2’)
Maybe that’s the beauty of Rockin’ the Suburbs—it was, and remains, an album about the tension between the mundane and the extraordinary, the painful and the funny, the personal and the universal.
After Rockin’ the Suburbs, Ben Folds continued his musical journey, though the road he traveled became a bit more unpredictable. In 2005, he returned to the piano-driven pop world with Songs for Silverman, an album that was a bit more stripped-back and introspective compared to its predecessor and felt like a deep dive into Folds’ own psyche. Tracks like “Gracie” (a sweet, melancholic ode to his daughter) and “Landed” displayed his growing maturity as a songwriter, and the album itself felt more polished, with fewer of the snarky edges that defined his earlier work.
2011 saw Ben Folds Five reunite for a short period, culminating in the release of The Sound of the Life of the Mind in 2012. The chemistry of the original trio was still intact but didn’t get as much traction as their previous records had.
Since then, Folds has embraced a variety of musical projects. He’s dipped into classical music (his piano concerto, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, premiered in 2015), collaborated with artists like Amanda Palmer and Nick Hornby, and even found himself dabbling in pop culture commentary. In 2017, Folds took on a more public role as the artistic director for the prestigious National Symphony Orchestra, from which he’d resign in 2025 thanks to a certain orange, pubic-hair doodling, fascist felon.
While I’ve drifted in and out of his catalogue at times, it’s clear his knack for deeply personal storytelling and biting humour remains ever-present. His later works may lack the youthful anger or suburban frustration of Rockin’ the Suburbs and that of the ..Five’s initial albums, but there’s still that same dedication to blending raw emotion with melodic ingenuity—whether he’s writing about parenthood, the disillusionment of aging, or his various collaborations with the orchestral world.
Here we are at the end of the road with Springsteen’s final studio album.
At least, for now. Within a few days we’ll have seven previously unreleased studio albums to absorb and while Tracks isn’t included in this rundown, the albums that make up Tracks II: The Lost Albums are just that, full studio albums. There’s also confirmation that, along with Tracks III (ffs, that vault must have been huge) Bruce also has a new solo studio album ‘in the can’ earmarked for a 2026 release. It’s like he doesn’t read this blog with the amount of work he’s lining up for me.*
Where was I? Oh, yes, for now. Letter To You was an album that came by relative surprise in its timing mid pandemic (he’d managed get the band together for a week at the end of the previous year**) and in its absolute quality and power. Letter to You feels like a much-needed warm hug from an old friend you didn’t expect to see again —if that friend was a thunderous barroom preacher with a worn leather jacket, a telecaster slung over his back and a saxophone-wielding mate waiting in the car.
If this turns out to be the last E Street Band powered album, it’s one hell of a bow out; it’s a combination of everything that was and still is great about it with relatively minimal production or overdub. Springsteen calls back to his past magnificently – the record bristles with revisited old chestnuts like ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’, the mildly Dylan-esque ‘Song for Orphans’, and the swaggering ‘If I Was the Priest’ rubbing shoulders with new tracks like ‘Burnin’ Train’ and ‘Last Man Standing’ that bring the E Street Band’s stadium roar back in full force. While at times there’s an odd juxtaposition between songs written by Thesaurus Bruce and One-Phrase-Repeated-Over-and-Over Bruce, the combination is a winner. It’s like we’ve run into him at a bar and he just had to tell us one last story (or twelve).
Where this sits in the overall Springsteen album run-down I’ve yet to figure out but Letter To You is certainly his strongest and most consistently spot-on since Magic. That it’s the first time since The River that the band worked through songs without having had them demoed first is also clear – there’s a sense of spontaneity and freshness in the arrangements that hasn’t been heard in decades. There’s very little to nitpick about in Letter To You but…
Least: The Power of Prayer
While ‘Rainmaker’ hasn’t aged as well as it could have and ‘House of a Thousand Guitars’ is a little let down by the repetition of its title, ‘The Power of Prayer’ is absolutely the weakest link on an otherwise indecently strong album. Feeling more like it would be at home on Working on a Dream, Springsteen’s gospel inclinations here come off less like a heartfelt epiphany and more like a cliche-laden preacher hitting the stage unprepared. It’s an empty-cliche-ridden snoozer for me, it aims high and wants to hit that uplifting spiritual power of earlier efforts but leans on formula instead rather than feeling. I mean – when was the last time you ran your fingers through the hair of your significant other and thought ‘that’s the power of prayer’***? It may well be sincere but so is a 99p greeting card from Sainsbury’s.
Most: Ghosts
Hands down the album’s finest, Ghosts charges in on a revved-up E Street engine and never lets off. It’s a swirling elegy for lost bandmates and the magic they created together but manages to balance that sense of nostalgia with catharsis. Time passes and moves even for our heroes. You feel old, you feel alive but, for these glorious five and a half minutes you feel together with Bruce and the E Street Band.
What makes ‘Ghosts’ – and the best of this album – work so well in 2020 and 2025 is the sense that these songs didn’t spend too much time in gestation. There’s no feeling of over-working or heavy production. Bruce isn’t trying to venture into a different sonic direction here. He doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, just crank up the Chevy and happily barrel down memory lane.
Letter to You is the grown-up version of Born to Run, with a few hands dragging in sentimental baggage. It’s occasionally corny, but mostly full-blooded and triumphant. And when ‘Ghosts’ kicks in, you remember why you climbed in the passenger seat in the first place: for the ride, for the stories, and for the shared scars of friendship and loss. Life ain’t always a beauty but, hey, it’s alright.
*Of course he does.
** Two thoughts – chronologically this places those sessions in the same year as the final Western Stars sessions as well as those for Twilight Hours on Tracks II. Secondly: these songs were written following a bout of writers’ block and after the death of his friend and on an acoustic guitar given to him by a fan after one of his “Springsteen on Broadway” shows. That’s one hell of a burst of creativity.
Mumbling About... 