Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Twilight Hours’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

The cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Twilight Hours” album.

(Note: This is the sixth post in a series in which I am reviewing the seven albums in Bruce Springsteen’s “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” boxed set, separately. The set will come out on June 27.)

In 2021, Stephen Colbert asked Bruce Springsteen an interesting question on “The Late Show”: “You have one song to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?”

Would The Boss respond with something by Elvis? The Beatles? Chuck Berry? No, no and no.

“One? Whoa,” he replied. ” ‘Summer Wind,’ Frank Sinatra.”

For anyone who is surprised by that answer … you won’t be surprised after you listen to Springsteen’s Tracks II album, Twilight Hours. It may make you think of Sinatra. Or other artists whose influence Springsteen acknowledges in the liner notes (quoting from this Variety interview): “Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach, those kinds of records. I don’t know if people will hear those influences, but that was what I had in my mind. It gave me something to hook an album around; it gave me some inspiration to write. … It’s connected to my solo records writing-wise, more Tunnel of Love and Devils & Dust, but it’s not like them at all.”

Springsteen was actually talking about his 2019 Western Stars album in that interview. But Twilight Hours and Western Stars were recorded at the same time, and “At one time it was either a double record or they were part of the same record,” Springsteen says.

The Western-themed songs became Western Stars. The songs that became Twilight Hours (with the exception of “High Sierra”) were geographically generic — songs, mostly about love and loneliness, set in no particular city, but often with more of an urban or suburban feel than a rural one. The centerpiece is “Lonely Town,” a six-minute, 38-second epic about “a place where rain keeps falling, the skies are always gray … If love has let you down, there’s always a room to be found here, in Lonely Town.”

Springsteen separated the Western Stars songs from the Twilight Hours material because he thought the latter “was going to throw people off because it was so intentionally middle of the road,” he says in the liner notes.

Bruce Springsteen’s “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” will be released on June 27.

Like Western Stars, Twilight Hours has a large cast of backing musicians. Among them are many E Streeters, from the current version of the band (Max Weinberg, Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, Charlie Giordano, Lisa Lowell, Curtis King Jr., Michelle Moore, Curt Ramm, Barry Danielian) and past ones (David Sancious, Cindy Mizelle). Only Weinberg (who plays on six tracks) and Lowell are on Twilight Hours only, and not Western Stars.

Among the songs here are “I’ll Stand by You,” written about 25 years ago and previously released on the soundtrack to the 2019 film “Blinded by the Light.” It sounds like the same version to me, though perhaps there are minor differences that I’m not picking up.

For me, Springsteen-as-urbane-crooner works well in small doses only. Songs like “Sunday Love” (already released as a single), “Follow the Sun” and “Late in the Evening” are Tracks II highlights, just as strong as anything else to be found here. But the hooks of some of the other songs aren’t as strong, and I felt like this album gets bogged down in blandness and repetitiveness more so than any other Tracks II offering.

Lonely Town is a place worth visiting. But don’t stay there too long.

There are also too many awkward or clichéd lines, on songs like “September Kisses” (“September kisses, as sweet as wine/As sweet and bitter, as your lips on mine”), “Another You” (“There will never be another you/When this burns and evening’s empires come crashing through/Still, there’ll never be another you”) and “Twilight Hours” (“Let’s not throw our love away/Let’s learn to live and love another day”). The music, throughout Twilight Hours, sounds polished, but the lyrics sometimes come off like early drafts that Springsteen never got around to perfecting.

The songs of Twilight Hours are:

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

For more information, visit lostalbums.net.

HERE is my review of the boxed set’s first album, “LA Garage Sessions ’83.”

HERE is my review of the boxed set’s second album, “Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.”

HERE is my review of the boxed set’s third album, “Faithless.”

HERE is my review of the boxed set’s fourth album, “Somewhere North of Nashville.”

HERE is my review of the boxed set’s fifth album, “Inyo”

HERE is my review of the boxed set’s seventh album, “Perfect World.”