The 1990’s is often felt to have been Bruce Springsteen hiatus and least productive or to be frank least commercially successful period of the noted artists career. The new box set containing 7 mostly fully realised albums that were left on the shelf primarily from the post classic 1975-1988 era actually does include an album from 1983 and this one which has been described as grab bag, less cohesive. So where on earth does one begin when faced with 83 new tracks? Play them all? Play them one album at a time in sequence? Pick out tracks from each set? I decided to immerse myself fully in one disc at a time requiring anywhere between one single spin and perhaps 2 or 3 revisits.
Some familiar territory makes it less of a daunting task on this disc with several cuts from the mid-late 1990’s when Springsteen collaborated with Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers (out of the Iron City of Pittsburgh). ‘Another Thin Line’ features a couple of amazing guitar solo’s screeching like they’d have paired nicely with Youngstown or Murder Incorporated and should have been played much more by the E Street Band over the years. This studio track has clarity that the live versions I heard a couple of times in New York at the end of the Reunion Tour and then carried around with me on a cassette somebody did for my backpacking trip around Australia (along with Further On Up The Road and Code Of Silence) lack. It kicks ass.
The lead off track ‘I’m Not Sleeping’ would also work spectacularly well live, with it’s Lucky Town style vocals from Bruce while ‘Idiots Delight’ finds a home here, Bruce having debuted the track on his own internet radio show during Covid. Bruce’s voice has that distinctive growl, the track giving off a vibe reminiscent of ’57 Channels’. “Such a mighty effort, such a small return” he concedes. Hell if this had been released in 1999, say on the earlier box set Tracks Disc 4 I think the returns would’ve been pretty decent.
The two standout tracks for me are the early 2000’s feeling ‘The Great Depression’ with the deliberate blurring of macro economics and Bruce’s own sense of self and the lyrically dense ‘Blind Man’. On the former Bruce contends “there ain’t no easy way to turn this all out for all the heartbreak in the bottom dropping out” while on the latter he hushes “snakes crawl and my bones shiver. I need you by my side, I need you by my side”. The lyrics pour out in a way far removed from his generally more economical style of writing.
‘Rain In The River’ was released 6 weeks prior to the box set contains dizzying reverb and those sledgehammer drums accompanied by gnarly guitar licks and desperation vocals reminiscent of a few tracks off Wrecking Ball. There is some familiar Bruce terrain here “last night I put on my jacket and went out for a ride”.
‘If I Could Only Be Your Lover’ has domesticity all over it alongside lush guitar sweeps and references to how perilous the inner world is during the all too frequent economic downturns we’ve had to suffer since the 1990’s. Portraying the inner tumult and exterior forces that have to be navigated with the “foreclosure sign, swing set swallowed up in weeds”. He’s reaching for Roy Orbison in a big way here and is that Nils on medidative guitar on the next tour? Lets hope there is one. Those wind chimes at the conclusion accentuate the fragility.
Less successful IMHO is ‘Cutting Knife’ which has some nice rollicking music that evokes an urgent almost emergency situation and a choir to soothe the skin towards the finish but is carrying an ever so slightly clunky metaphor “your blade is sharp and true” shame the track really doesn’t feel like it.
Some experimentation on ‘You Lifted Me Up’ with its repetitive gospel/60’s Mama’s and Papa’s/Beach Boys Coastal California vibe “all of my praise to you” multi tracked repeating vocals and some distortion creates for quite a nice uplifting sense of hope. The album maybe not all that grab bag after all.
“I account for my lack of trust in the mess I made of us” sums that up quite well on the closing and title track of this album ‘Perfect World’. How Bruce can hang onto 80+ tracks like this for literally decades has bewildered many. If this Disc 7? is to be considered a mess compared to the other 6 discs here on this gargantuan box set, then I’d say it’s a mighty fine one. “A ne-ar-ly per-fect” album?
I’ll have a listen to the L.A. Garage Sessions ’83 album next I think as much of that was bootlegged
