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Throughout most of the fourth disk, synthesizers play floating minor chords over mechanized drumbeats. In the mystifyingly moronic "Trouble in Paradise," the same Springsteen who professes to value lyrics actually writes "You do the drying, I'll do the dishes/Who'll do the crying when all the wishes don't come true?" Springsteen must have intended for the listener to sense a deep, realistic optimism at the core of Springsteen's famous hard-luck pessimism: instead, he sounds like a musical Danielle Steele, chronicling the middle-age discovery of true joy in a tainted world: "Happy/With you in my arms/Happy/With...
Simultaneous with the release of Tracks, Bruce Springsteen's new four-disk compilation of previously unreleased masters, stores across the country began to sell Songs, a 306-page book anthologizing every lyric Springsteen ever penned. These expensive, lavishly-produced new releases--together, the photo-heavy book and the beautifully packaged compilation will cost the die-hard fan $100--coincided exactly with Springsteen's nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and roughly with the release of multi-disk compilations by Springsteen's fellow Hall of Famers Bob Dylan and (posthumously) John Lennon...
...quality of the songs on Tracks varies widely from the terrific to the utterly assinine: most songs sound unremarkable but familiar. The first disk, however--covering the years 1972-77, but focusing heavily on 1972 and 1973, the years of Springsteen's major-label break-through--is almost uniformly very good, by far the best disk of this compilation; this is owed, in large part, to the remastered demos which Springsteen recorded solo for Columbia Records, with which the album opens. These songs will be familiar to fans of Springsteen's older work: they were released, played by the full...
...Springsteen at his flawed best, reminding us of our youthful affection: adorable Bruce in his white undershirt, half-shaven. But in the middle of the catchiest tune on the album, "Seaside Bar Song," which shares with the '60s-infused swinger "So Young and In Love" and the second disk's "Where the Bands Are" the same attitude of giggly boardwalk fun that made the early albums special, Springsteen reminds us where he is going: out of the organs and saxophone comes the ancestor of The Ghost of Tom Joad's most recognizeable whispered refrain, "The highway is alive tonight...
...presenting this archive of unused material, Springsteen begs the listener to question the choices made in assembling previous albums. It is difficult to say why "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the second disk's meditative song about the Vietnam War dead, did not make the cut for Nebraska, which included not only several forgettable songs--"Highway Patrolman," "Used Cars"--but also some of Springsteen's most idiotic whooping ("State Trooper"). In general, though, it seems that Springsteen's editorial taste has been very good: the songs on the second disk (1980-83) often feel as if they might...