Not much about Bruce Springsteen’s sixth album could have felt mythical upon its arrival in 1982. Coming after 1980’s double-album garage-rock opus The River and before the 1984 supernova Born in the U.S.A., this was a set of 10 uncharacteristically stark, unaccompanied acoustic songs, each more haunted than the last, that shifted Springsteen’s reputation from ebullient bandleader to evocative author of stories about desperate characters getting crushed by an American dream that turned out to not be for them. “I would say the closest I ever came to doing that would have been unintentionally, maybe Nebraska during the Reagan years,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2020. “I think if you wanted to find a body of work that expressed what it was like to be an American, say from 1970 to now, in the post-industrial period of the United States, I’d be a place you could go and get some information on that.” As Springsteen’s stature grew, so did that of his most modest-sounding album. Within a decade, the kind of rough-hewn four-track bedroom recordings that marked Nebraska would become a genre unto itself. Author Warren Zanes’ 2023 book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska recontextualized the album not just as a sonic and thematic departure, but as a pivotal moment in which Springsteen wrestled with depression and doubt about where he stood and where he was going. Scott Cooper’s 2025 movie based on the book, starring Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, only raised the stakes and the profile, although for Springsteen diehards, this period needed no help being mythologized. This four-LP reissue makes it clear that Nebraska did not always know it was going to be Nebraska, as the songs written during this time included ones that would eventually find their way to Born in the U.S.A. in decidedly glossier fashion. The rough acoustic demo of that album’s title track, which opens this box set, is relentlessly dour, and a million miles away from the bombast that tricked millions into thinking it was a jingoistic anthem. “Downbound Train,” “Working on the Highway,” and beloved B-side “Pink Cadillac” also appear here as sparse sketches. But the draw here for many fans will be the long-rumored “Electric Nebraska” tracks—six of the album’s ten songs performed with the E Street Band, before Springsteen ultimately reverted to the original acoustic solo versions. A collection like this does not intend to convince anyone that these decisions were mistakes, but it’s hard not to do a double take hearing well-worn songs like “Atlantic City” and “Mansion on the Hill” and the haunting title track so divorced from their trademark vibe. It is, however, a reminder that Springsteen comes by his blue-collar bard reputation honestly: Even his most understated album required heavy lifting.