Bruce Springsteen’s ‘LA Garage Sessions ’83’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Bruce Springsteen will release “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” on June 27.

Bruce Springsteen’s boxed set Tracks II: The Lost Albums — due out on June 27 — is a unique project in rock history. Never before has a major artist released seven complete albums — featuring more than 80 songs, recorded over a span of decades — at the same time.

For a reviewer, a unique approach is required. The only way to do the set justice, I believe, is to write separate reviews for each album. So I will do that. I will post them over the course of seven consecutive days, starting today. After that, I may do an eighth post as well, with some general comments about the complete set.

But anyway, we start today with LA Garage Sessions ’83, an album that Springsteen describes, in the liner notes, as “a critical bridge between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A.” He also says “I was still a little gun shy of fame. I was unsure whether to immediately release Born in the U.S.A. after Nebraska. I spent a good part of the next year in California working on an alternative record. That was the record that these LA ’83 demos are the result of.”

These are solo home recordings, as Nebraska was; Springsteen does all the singing and playing himself, with no overdubs by other musicians added later. After Nebraska he upgraded his recording equipment, though, so there is a greater variety of sounds here, and the tracks are more professional-sounding. And the songs are, in general, catchier than the dark story-songs and late-night meditations of Nebraska. As opposed to Nebraska, which seemed private and personal, Springsteen seems to be thinking — on some songs, at least — of reaching out to the kind of mass audience that he courted with Born in the U.S.A.

He was, of course, at the peak of his powers as a singer-songwriter. It is amazing, in retrospect, that he just left the big hooks of songs like “One Love” and “Don’t Back Down” on the cutting room floor, until now.

“Don’t Back Down on Our Love” has a bright and bouncy sound, though the lyrics are still quite dark. “I wanna weep but I’m broke inside and my tears won’t run/I wanna sleep but there ain’t no dream and the sleep won’t come,” Springsteen sings. Similarly, “Sugarland” is an agonizing tale of a farmer whose business is failing, though a chiming keyboard breaks through the gloom, to offer a bit of hope.

NEAL PRESTON

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

“Little Girl Like You” — which appears to be unfinished, clocking in at a mere one minute and 22 seconds — has the earnestness and the lilting charm of a vintage Everly Brothers song.

“The Klansman” feels like it is missing something, too. It is a snapshot of a boy coming face to face with evil when a member of the Ku Klux Klan visits his home. But then nothing happens, and the song’s brevity (Springsteen stops singing before the 2:20 mark, though there is a half-minute more of music) leads you to wonder if he simply never got around to finishing the story he was setting up.

“Follow That Dream” — which borrows its title and some of its lyrics from the perky 1962 Elvis Presley hit, co-written by Fred Wise and Ben Weisman — has a yearning sweetness to it that is unlike anything else on this album. “It’s still one of my favorite off-the-record things,” Springsteen says in the liner notes. “It’s just got something to it.”

“Johnny Bye Bye” strips away the drums that were added when the song was released as the B-side to 1985’s “I’m on Fire” and on the 1998 boxed set Tracks, giving the song a more intimate, Nebraska-like feel. And “County Fair” has a sparser arrangement than the version that was included on the Essential Bruce Springsteen compilation in 2003.

“Jim Deer” and “Richfield Whistle” are basically variations on each other. So are “Unsatisfied Heart,” “Fugitive’s Dream” and “Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad).” There are some major differences, though. In “Jim Deer,” for instance, the song’s title character ends up in prison, but in “Richfield Whistle,” he summons the strength to go straight.

As has happened elsewhere in Springsteen’s history as a recording artist, bits of discarded songs turned out to be useful to him, further down the road. “Black Mountain Ballad” contains the line “All she said was, ‘I’m sorry Joe, but I gotta go/We had it once but we ain’t got it anymore,’ ” which re-surfaced, slightly altered, in Born in the U.S.A.’s “Downbound Train.” Similarly, in “Seven Tears,” Springsteen sings a line — “Went down to see my gypsy man/He said, ‘Now son, I understand’ ” — that was re-worked into “Went down to see my V.A. man/He said, ‘Son, don’t you understand’ ” in the Born in the U.S.A. title track.

The early version of “My Hometown” that is included here finds Springsteen straining a bit to hit the notes, and not handling the phrasing as smoothly as he did on Born in the U.S.A. That version ends with the father telling his son, “This is your hometown.” But in this one, the father adds, “Though the world you may travel all around/This is your hometown.” Also, the final version’s “Kate” is “Mary,” here.

Some albums in Tracks II: The Lost Albums are quite cohesive, sonically and thematically. LA Garage Sessions ’83 is not. Some songs point to the artistic direction Springsteen would take on Born in the U.S.A., but others have more in common with Tunnel of Love (1987) or The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995). There are certainly some links between the songs, though. As critic Erik Flannigan writes in the liner notes, at various times on the album “characters can’t sleep, lying awake with isolating thoughts or having visions in their dreams. Others feel like strangers in familiar places or find themselves reflecting on crucial choices they’ve made.”

Or, as Springsteen asks repeatedly in “Unsatisfied Heart,” “Can you live with an unsatisfied heart?”

I know many Springsteen fans have been underwhelmed by the songs released so far from Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Me too. Though I do like “Sunday Love” and “Repo Man” quite a bit, the others, honestly, didn’t do much for me. But the good news is: There are a number of songs on LA Garage Sessions ’83 that probably would have generated more excitement.

Here are the songs on LA Garage Sessions ’83

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

For more information, visit lostalbums.net.

UPDATE: 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 sixth album, “Twilight Hours.”

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