Wow; Bruce ain't foolin' this week! TRACKS II announced, "Rain In The River" drops, & today... MORE!

April 4, 2025

Whew, what a week! And it's not quite over yet, Springsteen fans...

Although the initial teaser-announcement dropped on Tuesday, which was April Fools Day 2025, by yesterday morning it was crystal-clear that Bruce Springsteen wasn't foolin' around at all. As per the official press release, Tracks II: The Lost Albums will be released worldwide on Friday, June 27. The original Tracks box-set, released back in 1998, consisted mainly of outtakes from Springsteen's sessions for his first eleven albums. This second Tracks set, however, will contain seven full-length albums that haven't been released previously for various reasons - "...full records," says Bruce himself in the press release, "some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released... I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.”

Tracks II: The Lost Albums will be released in digital/streaming form (apparently at no extra cost to certain music-streaming-service subscribers) and in deluxe boxed sets consisting of seven CDs or nine vinyl LPs, accompanied by 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. There also will be an abridged twenty-tracks highlights collection, Lost And Found: Selections from The Lost Albums, released in one-CD/two-LPs formats on June 27. Click here for various pre-ordering options.

Here's some more information on each of the seven albums (consisting, as per the press release, of eighty-two previously unreleased tracks and seventy-four previously unheard songs) in Tracks II: The Lost Albums:

L.A. Garage Sessions '83 (1983)

Tracks:

1. Follow That Dream

2. Don’t Back Down On Our Love

3. Little Girl Like You

4. Johnny Bye Bye

5. Sugarland

6. Seven Tears

7. Fugitive’s Dream

8. Black Mountain Ballad

9. Jim Deer

10. County Fair

11. My Hometown

12. One Love

13. Don’t Back Down

14. Richfield Whistle

15. The Klansman

16. Unsatisfied Heart

17. Shut Out The Light

18. Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad)

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (1993)

Tracks:

1. Blind Spot

2. Maybe I Don’t Know You

3. Something In The Well

4. Waiting On The End Of The World

5. The Little Things

6. We Fell Down

7. One Beautiful Morning

8. Between Heaven and Earth

9. Secret Garden

10. The Farewell Party

Somewhere North of Nashville (1995)

Tracks:

1. Repo Man

2. Tiger Rose

3. Poor Side of Town

4. Delivery Man

5. Under A Big Sky

6. Detail Man (*Check out the Facebook video below, posted by John Stamos back in 2020. It's a complete performance of "Detail Man" performed in 1995 at John Fogerty's 50th-birthday party, featuring Fogerty on backing vocals and Stamos on drums performing with Fogerty's band:)

7. Silver Mountain

8. Janey Don’t You Lose Heart

9. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone

10. Stand On It

11. Blue Highway

12. Somewhere North of Nashville

Inyo (1996-1997)

Tracks:

1. Inyo

2. Indian Town

3. Adelita

4. The Aztec Dance

5. The Lost Charro (*Below is a screenshot of since-deleted video of Springsteen recording "The Lost Charro" with Mariachi Real De Mexico. It was posted on Patti Scialfa's Instagram page back in 2014:)

6. Our Lady of Monroe

7. El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona)

8. One False Move

9. Ciudad Juarez

10. When I Build My Beautiful House

Faithless (2005-2006)

Tracks:

1. The Desert (Instrumental)

2. Where You Goin’, Where You From

3. Faithless

4. All God’s Children

5. A Prayer By The River (Instrumental)

6. God Sent You

7. Goin’ To California

8. The Western Sea (Instrumental)

9. My Master’s Hand

10. Let Me Ride

11. My Master’s Hand (Theme)

Twilight Hours (2010-2011)

Tracks:

1. Sunday Love

2. Late in the Evening

3. Two of Us

4. Lonely Town

5. September Kisses

6. Twilight Hours

7. I’ll Stand By You

8. High Sierra

9. Sunliner

10. Another You

11. Dinner at Eight

12. Follow The Sun

Perfect World (newly assembled from various tracks from the mid-1990s through 2018)

Tracks:

1. I’m Not Sleeping

2. Idiot’s Delight

3. Another Thin Line

4. The Great Depression

5. Blind Man

6. Rain In The River (This is the first track from the collection to be released as an advance single. Click here to listen.)

7. If I Could Only Be Your Lover

8. Cutting Knife

9. You Lifted Me Up

10. Perfect World

Note: While many Springsteen fans already are familiar with the versions of "Idiot's Delight" and "Another Thin Line" recorded and officially released by Joe Grushecky, far fewer fans seem aware that a version of "Perfect World" was recorded by John Mellencamp and released on his 2023 album Orpheus Descending. Click here to listen.

A special website for this project, LostAlbums.net, also was launched this week. At the top of the homepage, visitors are advised to "return to LostAlbums.net weekly for newly-released music and content."

As we noted at the beginning of this report, it indeed has been quite a week filled with some very exciting and interesting news for fans of Bruce Springsteen's music. And the best possible way to close this report is, of course, with another newly released recording featuring Springsteen...

While it's certainly understandable that there won't be a "First Friday" archival Nugs live-recording release this week due to the big announcement/first-single release, there is nevertheless another new record featuring Bruce Springsteen that has been released officially today. It's "Ten Years Gone" by The Waterboys featuring Bruce Springsteen, from their newly released album Life, Death and Dennis Hopper, available on Sun Records in the U.S. (the first official Sun Records release for both The Waterboys and Bruce.)

"Ten Years Gone" is a searing, electric-guitar-laden meditation on Hopper's enduring influence, with Springsteen delivering a killer spoken-word part at the end. Listen for yourself below. To our ears, in its own way it's just as powerful and moving as the spoken-word part he provided for Lou Reed's "Street Hassle" back in '78.