Not a career retrospective, Bruce Springsteen's "Tracks" gathers four discs worth of unreleased songs, B-sides, and alternate takes.
It does miss out on a few great songs, like the superb rock n' roll gem "From Small Things" (which is now finally available on the "Essential Bruce Springsteen" collection), and the grinding, bluesy folk of "If I Was The Priest" (which isn't).

But that's a minor complaint, because this big, handsomely packaged and well annotated set is a real treasure trove. Bruce Springsteen has always been famous for leaving great songs off his records simply because they didn't fit in with the overall mood or the theme of the record, and the quality of much of this material is amazing.

The songs are logically sequenced, beginning with a few early acoustic demos of songs which would appear on Springsteen's debut album, and ending with outtakes from "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town".
The first 2 1/2 discs are the best, but there is a lot of excellent material on all four CDs, ranging from acoustic folk-rock to tremendously gritty electric rock songs like "Give The Girl A Kiss" and the rough and emotional "Hearts Of Stone".
Other highlights include the driving hard rock of "Where The Bands Are" and "Rendezvous", the original version of "This Hard Land", and of course the classic "Pink Cadillac". And numerous other songs, many of which will be completely unknown to most listeners.

Springsteen may not be the blinding visionary that Bob Dylan is, but "Tracks" is almost as essential for Springsteen fans as Bob Dylan's renowned "Bootleg" series is for Dylan-philes. It is certainly hard to imagine another rock composer who could put out four CDs worth of outtakes and B-sides, let alone four discs which would maintain this level of quality.
This is not the place to start your Springsteen collection, of course, but it's a great stop to make along the way once you are hooked.

I know it's tempting to pick up the single disc 18-Tracks compilation instead of the whole four disc set, but this is truely four discs worth of great music. Fans of Springsteen should definitely pick up this set. I'm usually bored to death by B-Sides and rarities collections, but I absolutely adore this set. Every song has something to say. When most bands are struggling to include one or two decent songs on an album, Bruce has come forward with stuff that didn't make the cut at first, and it's more consistent then most albums coming out today. He is an amazing musician and this release helps to display that. It's hard to believe that most of these songs stayed in the vaults for no one to hear for so long. One highlight is My Love Will Not Let You Down, which consistently made it's way into live sets when the E Street band reunited in 1999. There's a great recording of This Hard Land, which is one of my favorite songs Bruce has ever written. Overall, I like the recording found on his Greatest Hits set more, but this recording is still wonderful. This set is a must buy for fans, and it is certainly good for anyone seeking an education in what real music is all about.

Most artists shouldn't have collections of outtakes and unreleased songs, but most nowadays do. Often they're disappointing. You have to be very prolific and very good to make them worthwhile. You also have to be a questionable arbiter of your own material to keep such good material off your "official releases" (something Bob Dylan's been accused of). But, there is a reason why Springsteen, like Prince, Neil Young, and Dylan, is widely bootlegged, and not just for his amazing concerts. He is prolific, he is very good. BUT, he is a pretty good judge of his own material. A few lapses, but he still bats close to a 1.000.

The set starts off with a few demos. Here's a young man, hungry, ambitious, exploding with nervous energy and ideas, rushing through his songs on just his voice and an acoustic guitar. Upon repeated listening, they pale to the live, full-band versions, all except "Growin' Up." A great, great version. Next up, a great live cut, "Bishop Danced," just Bruce with Federici on accordian. It's a lost classic, and so is "Thundercrack." "Seaside Bar Song" is a good-time, swinging record, but "Santa Ana," "Zero...," and "Linda..." don't take off, lyrically or musically. I almost turn off the record, but then things pick up with the lost classic "Thundercrack." The best of the rest, a rocking live "Rendezvous," the retro, pile-driving "Give The Girl A Kiss" and "So Young...," the slow, romantic "Hearts Of Stone," and a slow, brooding "Iceman" are all good, but they don't match what you find on "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" or "The River." Either it's not quite as good or thematically, it clashes too much, or both. On a few, Bruce doesn't get through the whole song without botching the lyrics (luckily, they print them up for you). Still, a song like "Restless Nights" has a killer guitar break even if it isn't one of Bruce's best songs. The middle of the set is sustained by some excellent B-sides from the singles off the "Born In The USA" Lp, but the stand-out is the acoustic version of that Lp's title track. It takes the song somewhere darker, more disturbing, and ultimately saves the song from being hijacked as a widely-misinterpeted arena anthem. Bruce's 'cars and girls' songs are getting better, too. By 1978, they already transformed into social commentary, anger, and frustration instead of the retro, romanticism of his early years, but as you can see from the outtakes, he was still writing and recording some in that mold as late as 1984. But, again, he had outgrown them, so the nice, romantic "Frankie" gets shelved and the swaggering "Pink Cadillac" is banished to B-side purgatory. This is where the pickings get slim, and Bruce nearly hits a brick wall. Most of the last disc is generic sounding. They're not bad, but they cover well-worn territory. If they were musically more compelling, he'd get away with that, but they aren't. They sound generic. Still, "Sad Eyes" creates a nice mood, as does "Happy." The last track, "Brothers..." (unrelated to the similarly titled song on Disc 3), however, ends the set on a high note. Not a lost classic, but better than anything on the "Tom Joad" album. Just excellent. Had his effective, underrated re-recording of "The Promise" and "Missing" been included here instead of being banished to "18 Tracks" and a Europe-only CD single, respectively, the last quarter would've been so much better. The former is a lost classic (previously recorded in intolerably slow versions), the latter a strong latter day song exploring new ground (done for a movie directed by Sean Penn). "The Fever" should've been here, too (also on "18 Tracks").

Bruce's studio albums from "Wild, Innocent..." to "Tunnel Of Love" are all very good to great. Each one had been called a masterpiece by somebody, and dropping the songs you hear on "Tracks" doesn't hurt them. But, one could have a very respectable career had they recorded the music you hear on "Tracks."

Tracks has been a gift to all of us who enjoy great rock music in this era of manufactured pop. Bruce has kept some great songs hidden away from us (at least the ones the bootleggers haven't gotten their hands on!) There are some missing gems such as Tokyo(And the band played...),If I Was The Priest,Evacuation of the West which were on the Before the Fame disc that Bruce sued to get off the market, as long with Break-Out, Phantoms, Sugarland, Glory Days with extra verse, and County Fair. But this 4-disc set has enough music to keep any boss fan happy.
Disc 1:
You get to hear the dylanesque early Springsteen demos and word play gone overboard with songs like Bishop Danced. Fans of Wild & Innocent will love Zero and Blind Terry, it's in the same vain as Incident on 57th street about teenage romance. Thundercrack is amazing and Seaside Bar Song rocks, it's amazing these two tracks never got officially released!
Disc 2:
Starts out with some decent outtakes but just like the River, it has it's up and downs. The highlights include Loose Ends which should have been on the album, Roulette, and Wages of Sin which is a Nebraska outtake. It's to bad they are put between such clunkers as Where the Bands Are, Be True, and Mary Lou. The end of the album features an acoustic Born In The USA and a wonderful Shut Out the Light which would have made the BUSA album more relevant.
Disc 3:
Born In The USA outtakes and Tunnel of Love outtakes. This disc will appeal to the Born In the USA fans with songs like Cynthia, Stand On It, Car Wash, Man at the Top, Pink Cadillac, and TV Movie. The gems are Frankie which was tried several times to make an album, and Janey Don't You Lose Heart which would have given Bruce another hit single.
Disc 4:
Very personal album with some good story songs about life. Also has some songs that fans of his rock songs won't like. Gave it a Name, Over the Rise, Loose Change, and Brothers Under the Bridge are great story songs. Some touching songs about love include Sad Eyes which is kinda like Secret Garden. Happy and Back In Your Arms are also pretty good. The rest depends more on your taste I guess as I didn't find them to listenable. Brothers Under the Bridge is probably Bruce near the top of his game when it comes to songwriting.

If you have almost every Springsteen album, then this just makes sense to get. Enjoy it and maybe one day someone will come along as good as Springsteen and get us out of this mediocre music era we are in now.

There is a core of Springsteen fans who feel his best efforts were done before "The River". These fans further believe that "the River would've made an exceptional "Single LP" instead of the pretty good "Double LP" that it was. These fans saw hope in the direction of Nebraska and the beginning of the end with "Born In The USA". This is not to say that any album after Nebraska was not good, but to say that Springsteens later efforts lacked the raw emotion that made otherwise great songs, exceptional songs.

The problem with "Tracks" is that in begins at the beginning of Bruce's career and traces it thru to the present and in doing so, it includes a plethera of songs that were not good enough for "Tunnel of Love", "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" If you hold these albums in the same esteem as "Greetings","the Wild, The Innocent,& The E Street Shuffle", "Born To Run", and "Darkness" Then you'll like Tracks more than than I did.

Another problem I have with Tracks is the lack of Springsteen's early music. The first CD cover his first four albums, the entire decade of the seventies. Numerous songs from this period were totally neglected on his Greatest Hits collection as well as the live anthology. This means the highly sought studio versions of Hammond demos such as "Arabian Nights", "Contessa", Street Queen" and "American Tune" which was cut at the last minute from "Greetings" will never be officially released. This is a sad moment for long time fans.

Plus the numerous songs recorded for "Darkness" some of which that were given to Southside Johnny for his albums will also never surface, officially now. This in itself would've constituted another CD but instead we only get "Hearts of Stone" and "Rendevous", and "Frankie" There is no "Talk To Me" or "The Way" or "The Promise"

Please Bruce, give us an official release of "The Promise" It would fit nicely with your latest efforts.

A final problem with "Tracks" is a lack of songs from Bruce's Steel Mill days plus such unrecorded gems such as "Ballad of the Self Loading Pistol"

Overall, if you're one of those fans, who relish the days when Bruce would say "I ain't the Boss" then you'll be a little disappointed with the last two discs. You'll find them to be "good" but not necassarily "great".

This is pretty much, all that is musically "Wrong" with Tracks. Fortunately, there is a lot of stuff that are "Right" with it. I waffled between 3 or 4 stars for the final review and finally went with 3 stars because of the list price of $70. I know all the material is new but what happened to the days when Bruce would make sure his fans weren't gouged by the record industry. $70 list is just way too high for a 4CD release. You lose 1 star just because of this price. I highly recommend it for for even this core of fans who have been dissappointed with later efforts but just don't get it at full price.