Least and Most: Inyo

January 5, 2026January 5, 2026 / Tony / Leave a comment

Much like The Ghost of Tom Joad, Inyo is the album from Tracks II: The Lost Albums that, while I liked well enough first, has grown in my estimation with each listen revealing more.

Its similarity to …Joad in that respect shouldn’t be much of a surprise as this continues where that album left off. Glancing back The Bruce Springsteen Timeline, Inyo‘s seat in 1997 puts it a couple of years down the line from that album and a year or two ahead of the reunion tour and 2002’s The Rising. Previously that seven year gap between studio albums felt like a gulf – as though, following the ‘Shut the Fuck Up Tour’ that followed ...Joad, Springsteen looked back with the release of Tracks in ’98 and the eventual reunion the E Street Band rather than creating new material.

However, we know that Bruce seems to have had at least four things on the boil at once in those days. With the ’90s proving just as prolific in terms of writing (if not releases), while touring …Joad across 18 months, Springsteen kept writing with many more songs written in hotel rooms after shows. While we got some of those songs on 2005’s Devils & Dust, it’s on Inyo that these are finally presented as a piece – albeit with the later additions of ‘Adelita’ and ‘The Last Charro’ date from 2010 and the initial accumulation of work for the Western Stars project. This does present an interesting crux – Springsteen’s singing voice and production style of the mid-to-late ’90s was very different to that of the Western Stars era and running material from that era through the Ron Aniello filter / processing creates an odd effect that means quieter songs from the original ‘batch’ like ‘One False Move’ have a very different sound and listening experience to the ‘newer’ material enough to feel like two distinctly different sessions rather than one complete set.

This sits one of the stronger parts of Springsteen’s California Cycle – those early ’90s albums reek of L.A over-production but as he travelled around – on motorbike, in car or tourbus – and became infatuated with Californian culture and its history you feel the search for voices that represent all sides and from both sides of the border.

This, to me, is a fascinating period of Springsteen’s career, this exploration of different themes and voices as he continued his own search for his ‘solo’ voice, a stretch of his career where the music narrowed in sound but widened in scope — fewer characters chasing escape, more people simply trying to endure. Like Joad, then, the songs on Inyo are mostly acoustic and restrained, built around his voice and guitar, but there’s a subtle expansion in texture that sets it apart and adds a delicious flavour. Mariachi-influenced horns, accordion, and violin drift in and out, not as novelty or genre exercise that had overwhelmed Somewhere North of Nashville and will eventually become the focus rather than the songs on later albums, but as atmosphere — a way of grounding these stories in a specific cultural and physical landscape. The arrangements remain sparse, almost severe at times, but they’re carefully shaded, giving the songs a cinematic sense of place without ever tipping into overstatement.

Least: Indian Town

This isn’t necessarily a bad song, there aren’t any on here for me. More that ‘Indian Town’ doesn’t stand out or add as much as the other songs. It feels very much of a piece with Joad and even Nebraska‘s songs and gets a little lost in the memory after listening to the album.

Most: Ciudad Juarez

There are a number of songs on Inyo that could sit as ‘Most’, for me, the closing trilogy in particular is one of the strongest in Springsteen’s catalogue. However, “Ciudad Juarez” is the song on Inyo that completely levels you. It’s a haunting, politically charged ballad, that’s told with such stark clarity that you can hear every word with a directness that makes it so heartbreaking. Springsteen places us in the shoes of a grieving father whose daughter vanishes in the border city, offering no closure, only loss. It’s one of the saddest songs he’s ever recorded, stripped of sentimentality and all the more devastating for it.

The song sits in familiar Nebraska/Ghost of Tom Joad territory but with a distinct, mournful arrangement, punctuated by two tragic trumpet solos that hover like funeral hymns. Beneath Bruce’s restrained delivery is a quiet, seething indictment of the violence and systems that enable it: drugs flowing north, guns flowing south, blood left behind. It’s heartbreaking, enraged, and deeply empathetic—arguably one of Springsteen’s finest and most politically pointed songs and is one of many on this album that make you wonder how the hell it sat in the vaults for so long.

Least and Most: Somewhere North of Nashville

December 4, 2025 / Tony / 1 Comment

Quick side note: I’m addressing these in their presumed chronological order were they to have been released as the albums they’ve been grouped as rather their ordering in the box.

Aside from being a fascinating look at Springsteen’s working process, Tracks II: The Lost Albums provides an insight into his archival management too. Somewhere North of Nashville is a prime example of both: work on the project that became Western Stars actually began in 2010. That places its genesis between Working on a Dream – his last album with Brendan O’Brien – and Wrecking Ball – his first with Ron Aniello. It’s also the period of time when he was rooting around in his vaults for The Promise and the archival box-set release of Darkness…

Given that theWestern Stars project didn’t reach full fruition until 2019 – the process for which we’ll get to in a few albums time – it’s indicative of how many different projects Bruce had (and, seemingly, has) on the go at anyone time. At the start of that project, in 2010, Springsteen told Aniello “come out here, we have plenty of material to work with” and handed over “a country record [that] was basically cut with musicians in LA – live with a tight band – in the 1990s.”

Quite a find I’d guess…. ish. If we go back again to the Bruce Springsteen Timeline and move the dial back to 1995 we’ll find a pretty busy period. Having popped his ‘loops’ album on the shelf, completed the Greatest Hits material and accompanying promotion, Bruce decided to leave the band to it once again and make a ‘country’ record. With two different recording setups in place and a backing band that included a couple of E Streeters, he’d work on the livelier stuff in the afternoon and save the more sombre material for the evening. The story goes that the Boss was originally making one album before the narrative voice and style of the Ghost of Tom Joad material became the more cohesive of the projects and while the ‘other’ material remained a good way to get the band warmed up, it remained in the vault instead.

All we had, until now, was a smattering of track names that were known to have been recorded at the time like ‘Tiger Rose’ and ‘Poor Side of Town’ that were presumed in the same mould as the ..Joad material. Turns out, they’re very much not. Somewhere North of Nashville wasn’t a complete album. It couldn’t have been, really, given that …Joad soon took other focus. Instead, as part of the archival process, Bruce and Aniello recruited the same players that featured on the original material – including Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar (if you’re ever wondering ‘how much pedal steel guitar is too much pedal steel guitar?’ this album has your answer) – and added some songs to the mix that matched the initial clutch. Songs such as ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone’ and ‘Somewhere North of Nashville’ (which would be revisited and retooled again for Western Stars) are among the ‘new’ songs.

This isn’t one of the strongest albums in the set. In fact, there’s a lot of material here that could, really should, have stayed in the vaults and nobody would have minded. While it certainly fleshes out the picture of Springsteen’s output during that era and, again, gives a revealing look at his working process, this isn’t a ‘holy crap, Ghost of Tom Joad should’ve been a double album’ revelation. I don’t have to wrack my mind to chose a weak moment here, I’m afraid….

Least: Detail Man

I could’ve gone with any of the three ‘man’ songs on this set to be honest but ‘Delivery Man’ is perhaps the most redundant thematically and, as the third of the set the prospect of an over-active pedal-steel accompanied “baby I’m a double glazing selling man” or “here comes a British Gas boiler repair man baby” arrives there’s no denying the skip button comes in to play. At least ‘Delivery Man’ is funny.

The other element here is that this plays to the weakest link on the album: a few too many of these songs lean into a very particular style of ‘country tonk’ that would sound more at home soundtracking a film with Clint Eastwood and an orang-utan than they do on an album made in 1995.

But….. but, but but. This is still a Bruce Springsteen album and – as I’ve often pointed out – some of his finest songwriting occurred during this decade so beyond the dross, there’s some real gold here and – once you get past the aforementioned ‘country tonk’ – there’s the inescapable sound of a strong, tight band letting rip. You can practically picture Bruce pulling out his notebook of songs and counting them off as they tear into great versions of older material like ‘Janey Don’t You Lose Heart’ or ‘Stand On It’ (the former working beautifully) and the exquisite ‘Under A Big Sky’ which, though dating back to the ’80s as a song, is wonderful highlight.

Having initially binged through Tracks II: The Lost Albums like an addictive Netflix series, I’ve since been spending more time with them on an album by album basis and letting each one breath in its own right and asking myself ‘would I still want to buy this one if it was a stand-alone release?’

Obviously, while that’s usually a given with Bruce I’ve become a bit more selective of late, which is probably why his soul karaoke album still isn’t on my shelves. The quality of his songwriting is usually enough of a reason to pay the price of admission – even if that price is this much pedal steel guitar – and the ’90s were still fertile ground.

Most: Silver Mountain

As with any archival release there’s often a track that begs the ‘how was this shelved?’ On Somewhere North of Nashville that track is ‘Silver Mountain.’ It’s pure gold. It’s catchier than anything resigned to the vault has business being, it’s infectious – of all the album’s songs it’s this one that I find myself singing days after hearing – and the combination of joyous, foot-stomping energy in performance with tragic narrative of forbidden love places it more in line with a rootsy Americana than the cringe-and-pedal-steel of, say ‘Poor Side of Town.’

Least and Most: Streets of Philadelphia Sessions

December 1, 2025 / Tony / 2 Comments

If LA Garage Sessions ’83 was the collection of songs I was most familiar with ahead of Tracks II: The Lost Albums‘ release, then Streets of Philadelphia Sessions was the one I was most looking forward to. Despite there being three albums from the ’90s in the set, this was the most infamous of his ‘lost’ albums and one that had been referenced variously over the years as either his ‘loops’ or ‘hip-hop’ album as all that was known was that it utilised the same drum-machine and loop approach as his ’94 single ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ but that, due to it being ‘another relationship album,’ was benched.

Going back a way – and as previously quoted on one of my former Springsteen posts – Bruce said of it: “there’s a record that we recorded, mixed and didn’t put out. Bob Clearmountain mixed it, spent a lot of time on it… didn’t put it out. That was, like, ’94. And it still intrigues me. I still go back to it. There are still things on it that I really like, and I may go back to sort of say, ‘Okay, well, why…?’ Sometimes it’s timing, you know. There was a particular reason that I didn’t put out that group of music. Sometimes the timing just doesn’t feel right for that kind of record.”

So why wasn’t the timing right? It was 1994 and if we look once again at the original Bruce Springsteen Timeline it’s an otherwise blank space between his tour to promote Human Touch and Lucky Town with ‘the other band’ and the year before the mini E Street Band reunion for Greatest Hits. The ’90s are often considered a fallow period for Bruce, but this box set has at least upheld my long-held belief that his output remained strong but his continual-second guessing after the relative mauling of the aforementioned double-header of ’92 albums meant we missed out on a lot. And miss out we certainly did for Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is the strongest set of songs he put together that entire decade.

‘Streets of Philadelphia’ was recorded by Bruce alone, using a drum machine and synths. While he bought in other musicians to round it out, he stuck with the ‘demo’ version for release. The success of that song – both critically and commercially – as well as the process, must have unlocked something as he decided to cut a whole album using the same approach. The ‘loops’ disc that Springsteen had been given to use only appears on a couple of the tracks, the rest are spare, bruising and subdued synth-lead pieces but often shot through with piercing guitar work and a number of songs on which a small band was bought in to round out the sound. The album was completed, mixed and was ear-marked for release early the next year (1995) and then, Bruce hesitated. Was it Roy Bittan suggesting that a fourth relationship-focused album would be one too many for his audience that triggered the hold? Was it Springsteen unsure of such a diversion from his established sound? Was it the record label pointing out a ‘Hits’ album was expected? Given that Bruce is now in the habit of ret-conning events to fit a certain PR-Friendly version of history, we’ll never really know. We do know that we almost got it during his residency on Broadway – perhaps he was tired of having such a considered ‘blank’ in his story for the ’90s that he wanted to set the record straight – and that this is only one of two albums in the set that Ron Aniello was forbidden from tinkering with. For which we can all be grateful.

This, for me, is the Springsteen album I’d been waiting for. The over-produced element that plagued Human Touch and Lucky Town is entirely absent, there’s a maturity and confidence in his restraint that means no feel or sound is overdone and nothing overshadows the lyrical content and, perhaps for the only time on a Springsteen record, there’s no feeling that there’s a ‘this the radio hit!’ moment. In fact, in between taking credit for ending the Cold War, Apartheid, world hunger and averting World War 3, Steven Van Zandt points out in his autobiography that it was this lack of an obvious ‘hit’ that lead to Springsteen canning it and reverting to his ‘Nebraska persona.’ Either way, Streets of Philadelphia sessions is a gorgeously produced and crafted set of songs that take the narrative and themes Tunnel of Love ushered in and adds a level of lived-in authenticity that works wonderfully with the singing voice he found in his forties.

If there were someway to have this on wax without plumping down the £300 (ish) needed for the box this wouldn’t have left my turntable this year. As it is, the mp3 versions have barely left my stereo.

Least: The Little Things

You know that mp3 version of the album I have? This isn’t on it. While there’s no ‘that’s the hit!’ moment on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, this is the dud. While the remainder of this album’s songs feel true, this feels flippant, out of synch with the remainder and unnecessary (almost like the odd tangent of ‘Reno’ on Devils and Dust).

Most: Something In The Well

I could very easily have gone for many another track here. ‘One Beautiful Morning,’ ‘Between Heaven and Earth’ or ‘Waiting On The End Of The World’ are clear highlights but ‘Something In The Well’ is one of those songs that sits amongst his best work and points and future material too. Springsteen’s fights with the black dog are now well-documented but I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a struggle ever put so compellingly into song before that has made me go ‘holy fuck, that’s it’ – what I’ve often referred to as a ‘deep hole in a field,’ Springsteen casts as a well. Like so many other moments across this album, the instrumentation is minimal but not sparse and wholly effective. There’s also an element to the sound – if you strip it back to his guitar and vocal delivery – that’s at one with that which he’d flick back to in the following year for The Ghost of Tom Joad.

What makes Springsteen, when he’s on form like this, great as a song writer is his ability to look within, find what’s inside him and us, and turn it into something we can, and want, to listen to and ‘Something In The Well’ is another strong example of just that.

Least and Most: LA Garage Sessions ’83

November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 / Tony / 6 Comments

Just when I thought I was out…

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.

Well, time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of… mid week spins

November 13, 2025 / Tony / 3 Comments

Yeah, they’ll pass you by…

Been a while, again. Life, health, work, marking another year around the sun… things get busy.

Still, ahead of ploughing into a coupe of post series it feels like getting a good toe back in the water by going for another recap of recent acquisitions and spins. In anticipation of the one of those series, let’s start with Mr Springsteen…

Bruce Springsteen – Losin’ Kind

What a year to be a Springsteen fan – Tracks II: The Lost Albums, confirmation that Tracks 3 is on the way and, now, we get Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition. Seemingly released to tie in with ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ hitting the screen, this is the one that’s been waited for as hungrily as the fabled ‘loops’ album as it contains ‘Electric Nebraska‘. As powerful as the E Street ‘power trio’ takes on ‘Atlantic City’ and ‘Born In The USA’ are, and subtly tasteful the renditions of ‘Nebraska’ and ‘Reason to Believe’ may be, the decision to can in favour of the original’s stark beauty isn’t questioned by these. Just as worth the price of admission though is the disc of ‘Nebraska Outtakes’. Songs like ‘Losin’ Kind’, ‘Gun In Every Home’ and ‘On The Prowl’ rank among his finest and, as with Tracks – raise a lot of ‘how the hell did this end up on the floor?’ style questions.

Elliott – Carry On

Mazzy Star – Bells Ring

There’s a surprising number of records sat in front of my shelves that are new purchases still awaiting to be filed away – which itself is always a bit of High Fidelity style fun.* Amongst which are lot of recent reissues that have meant some long-time favourites are now in rotation including two albums from Elliott which were barely out of my cd player back in the day. Once pigeon-holed as ’emo’ there’s a lot more to their atmospheric and sweeping tunes that make me think of them more as an ‘ambient Sunny Day Real Estate’.

Mazzy Star’s sumptuous sophomore album, So Tonight That I May See, was propelled along by the surprise dominance of ‘Fade Into You’. Beyond that opening track’s hypnotic charms though are the album’s real beauty and strengths.

Air – Playground Love (with Gordon Tracks)

While I spent a bit of time last summer hunting around Lyon’s record shops and scooping up the first three Air albums it’s only now that I’ve been able to get hold of their soundtrack – and, apparently, second album, The Virgin Suicides – in this instance the ‘Redux’ version. I’ve got no memory of the film, the book is on the shelves though, yet while this doesn’t really work as a second album in the truest sense it’s a lot closer to Moon Safari than 10,000 Hz Legend was and I’ve always got time for an Air album. I just wish they’d rerelease Pocket Symphony and Love 2.

BORIS – Korosu

Turnstile – Never Enough

We were in Third Man Records up in London a week or so back and walked in to the always-welcome thunderous delight of BORIS’ fourth album Heavy Rocks being played out at sufficiently high volume.

Turnstile’s Never Enough album caught me be surprise earlier in the year and has been on frequent rotation since, I can genuinely get behind all the plaudits its been getting. Easily one of the year’s finest albums. Which brings me to Mogwai…

Mogwai – Lion Rumpus

Having been given the recent ‘If The Stars Had a Sound’ Mogwai doc I’ve been hungrily absorbing it when I’m able to get sufficient time with the TV to do so. I forget how many years I’ve fucking loved this band but watching the documentary it’s a wonderfully warm feeling to see just how much love there is for them and to revisit the strange period in time (face masks, social distancing etc) when their The Love Continues album hit number one in the charts and the sense of jubilation it created. As they have a knack for releasing their albums early in the year these days it’s easy to forget that they dropped The Bad Fire in January but it’s been a regular play for me and another of those highlights of 2025’s albums.

*strictly alphabetical by artist for the main with separate Post-Rock and Soundtracks/Comps sections if you’re curious.

Weekend spins, or what I did on my summer holidays…

September 13, 2025September 13, 2025 / Tony / 3 Comments

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.

*fuck Oasis.

Least and Most: Letter to You

June 24, 2025June 24, 2025 / Tony / 20 Comments

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.

***as a Humanist the answer is ‘never.’

Least and Most: Western Stars

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025 / Tony / 7 Comments

Ok…. let’s get back into it. Western Stars is still the odd one in the Springsteen back catalogue – while it may well be that some of the albums on Tracks II: The Lost Albums will fill in some of the steps that Bruce to get here, it sits apart at the moment; neither the acoustic, bare-bones approach of his other ‘solo’ albums or as ‘rock’ as his other work with full bands. Much like We Shall Overcome.. this is vey much a one-off detour*.

Where this album sits in my own ranking of Springsteen’s albums will vary depending on the mood I’m in: with the passing of time this album’s single-sonic style has meant that it’s not one I reach for typically and if you’re not up for that sound, it’s a skip as very little on here that varies from the ‘Bruce goes big, full-orchestra Glen Campbell / Burt Bacharach / Jimmy Webb’. At times the stylistic choice with its over-emphasis on twang and orchestral pop feels forced (much like a lot that Ron Aniello ‘brings’ to Springsteen’s music of late) and weighs downs songs that, in another setting, might have bounced freer without the need to add them on.

There are, however, a bevvy of solid Springsteen songs on Western Stars that are not only strong enough to withstand the production treatment but flourish in their arrangements and Bruce’s sonic departure. ‘Sleepy Joe’s Cafe’, for example, wouldn’t work in any other context yet here is a great addition. Songs like ‘Western Stars,’ ‘Chasin’ Wild Horses,’ ‘Hello Sunshine’, ‘There Goes My Miracle’ and closing ‘Moonlight Motel’ feel like Springsteen had got a very good core of songs for this project.

Sadly, like a lot of his later-career albums at this point, there weren’t quite enough and so we get some reheated tunes – we know now that ‘Somewhere North of Nashville’ has been repurposed from a mid-’90s project – and heavy production to polish up the lesser tracks.

Take, for example:

Least: Hitch Hikin’

Given that some of Bruce’s previous album openers have been real strong jump-off points (think ‘Radio Nowhere’, ‘We Take Care of Our Own’ for recent examples or ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ or ‘Thunder Road’ or fucking ‘Born in the USA’), Western Stars gets off to a sluggish limp with a song that could’ve been fine were it not for the hammy production and slopping on of backing and orchestration that does nothing for it.

Most: Drive Fast (The Stuntman)

‘Drive Fast (The Stuntman)’ fits very firmly in the list of great Springsteen songs that work well in this album’s context and would actually work well elsewhere – here the orchestra joins and swells as Springsteen’s character piece – an injured stuntman recalling his glory days – unfolds, elsewhere it could just as easily be a Nils Lofgren slide. While this character – like so many on Western Stars – is past his best, Springsteen gives them a beautiful treatment.

*excluding the ‘film’ version of the same album that followed a few months later and stapled on a cover of fucking ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’.

Least and Most: High Hopes

March 20, 2025 / Tony / 7 Comments

Reviewing High Hopes as a studio album feels unfair, but as Springsteen insisted on referring to this reheated plate of leftovers as just that – so be it.

Arriving in the resurgence that followed Wrecking Ball and its tour, High Hopes is Springsteen’s most scattershot album to date, there’s no narrative, no theme, no intent other than putting out an album that’s made up of covers, out-takes and re-imagined versions of songs from various points of Springsteen’s then-recent recording past. Songs like ‘High Hopes’, ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad, and ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ had been recorded (much better) and released previously while tracks such as ‘Heaven’s Wall’, ‘Down in the Hole’ and ‘Hunter of Invisible Game’ were outtakes from somewhere between ’02 and ’08 while ‘Harry’s Place’ was an outtake from The Rising. As Tom Morello sat in with the E Street Band during the Wrecking Ball Tour to replace Van Zandt (who was spending time in Lillyhammer), he’s also all over this album in, unfortunately, negative ways. Aniello’s production values on top of songs that Springsteen had previously thought not good enough for release isn’t a winning combination and while there are a few solid cuts it’s mostly ‘meh’ (or ‘bof’ as the French would say). Perhaps Bruce knew it was gonna be a while before we got another new album from him and wanted to get some product on the shelves ahead of another tour. They can’t all be The Darkness on the Edge of Town after all.

‘Hunter of Invisible Game’ sums it all up for me. This is a song that’s got a good idea, it’s got pretty decent melody and Springsteen and Co thought so much of it that they even had Thom Zimny create a ten minute short film around it. But, like the album as a whole, the thought is there, the motions seem right but there’s no substance to it. The song doesn’t actually say anything and I still scratch my head as to what this fucking invisible game is that Bruce is hunting – is it relevance in the modern musical world? Is that why he’s wearing a Canadian tuxedo on the cover? It feels like he came up with what is, frankly, a fucking great title, but it ran out of legs. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad we get to hear it but that’s as far as it goes.

Still, that’s one of the better tunes…

Least: Heavens Wall

Wasn’t there anything else in the vault? ‘Raise your hand’ gets repeated thirty six times. Springsteen sings like he’s scrolling through Deliveroo trying to chose dinner at the same time.

Most: The Wall

Hello? (Hello, hello, hello) Is there anybody in there? Oh, no; not that Wall. This ‘The Wall’ was written in 1998 – thanks to an idea from Joe Grushecky – after Springsteen visited the Vietnam Memorial and memories of New Jersey musicians, including Walter Cichon, from Bruce’s youth who never returned from the war. While Springsteen having another great Vietnam song this late in his career wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, The Wall’ is one of his most personal and affecting and – with the bitingly bitter “I read Robert McNamara says he’s sorry” – is one of his finest songs. It’s all the more baffling that it’s ended up on an album with so muck cack.

Least and Most: Wrecking Ball

March 14, 2025 / Tony / 3 Comments

It must have been a strange time for the man they call The Boss as 2012’s Wrecking Ball arrived. Entering into his fifth decade of releasing albums, two members of his E Street Band having passed, his albums still hitting the top spot on release but quickly dropping out of view of the charts. Meanwhile he’s a very wealthy man while so many of his fans are facing the brunt of the then-economical issues America was facing. Some, if not all, of these themes are tackled on Wrecking Ball which marked a departure from Brendan O’Brien and the start of his work with Ron Aniello.

Since the comeback of The Rising, each of Springsteen’s albums had something to say about the times in which they were released. From that album’s 911 backdrop came the war-protesting Devils and Dust, Magic‘s swipe at Bush and even … The Seeger Session‘s choice of protest songs was clearly pointed while Working On A Dream seemed a celebration of Obama’s arrival. Wrecking Ball adds the plight of the downtrodden into the mix and seems to aim for a sound that touches on each previous but falls a little short and seems to have forgotten the sense of fun that had been present on so many of his previous albums and replaced it with too many songs where it feels that the words took more focus than the tune and Aniello’s stapled-on effects take the place of a full-band sound; Wrecking Ball contains contributions from several E Street Band members (notable absences include Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent and Roy Bittan) on a couple of tracks but with most instruments handled by Springsteen, Aniello and various session players.

It’s not a bad Bruce album, though. The songwriting is stronger than Working On A Dream, there’s more consistently good songs and the mix of performers – putting this somewhere between a ‘solo’ album and his ‘other band’ albums of the early ’90s in that respect – works well. There’s a lot to enjoy despite a few howlers, and listening back to it for this I’ve enjoyed it more than previously. Of course, I’ve still go no time for..

Least: Easy Money

Here I could go for the neutering and mangling of ‘Land of Hope and Dreams.’I could swing for the dour trod of ‘Jack of All Trades’. But, ‘Easy Money’…. it just feels so false. It’s an example of Aniello’s production choices that feel tacked-on and, despite the summon-the-masses, foot stomp approach of the song it’s too bloody slight in its substance. There are some heavy handed takes in the first verse but the most frequent lyric in this, literally, ‘(Na-na-na-na-na) Whoa! Whoa! (Na-na-na-na) Whoa! Whoa!’. This and ‘Shackled and Drawn’ sit together as what happens when the dourness of Aniello’s production sucks the air out of songs that aim for …The Seeger Sessions‘ lightness of foot.

Most: We Take Care of Our Own

It was almost too obvious a choice for Obama to use this in his re-election campaign. This is Springsteen at his best – a real call to arms that doesn’t hammer any point too hard but packs plenty of punch. It sounds fresh, akin to his then new-found friends in Gaslight Anthem or Arcade Fire, and relevant. Much like ‘Born In The U.S.A’ it’s an fist-pumper with a bitter current beneath it but that doesn’t overshadow it. Here Aniello’s touch is light and, released as the lead-off single for the album, it felt like a promise of more to come. Also worth paying attention to are ‘Death to My Hometown’, ‘This Depression’, ‘Rocky Ground’, ‘We Are Alive’, ‘This Depression’ and ‘Swallowed Up (In The Belly of The Whale).’

Mumbling About…

bruce springsteen