After issuing his first album in 1973, Bruce Springsteen spent more than a decade building a deserved reputation as the best live act in rock and roll. During that time, however, his discography consisted solely of studio albums. If you weren’t lucky enough to have seen him in concert, all you knew of his stage presence was the rave reviews from those who’d managed to score tickets.

That changed in late 1986 with the release of Live 1975/85. Unfortunately, its contents were stitched together from a variety of shows, and if you bought the five-LP vinyl version, the performance had to stop nine times while you changed or turned over a record. Still, it’s no wonder fans ordered a record-setting 1.5 million advance copies of the album and formed long lines at record stores, sending Live 1975/85 straight to the top of the Billboard chart upon its debut. Unless you’d been to a show, this was the first and only way to get any sense of why the concertgoers were so excited.

Not anymore. After Live 1975/85 came Chimes of Freedom, a live EP from Sweden; MTV Unplugged; Live in New York City; an EP from the Magic tour; and The Complete 1978 Radio Broadcasts, which delivered five stupendous concerts on 15 CDs—and all that was just for starters. A website has since made audio from more than 350 Springsteen concerts available for streaming or purchase, and you can see as well as hear his shows on a wide variety of DVDs and Blu-rays, such as Live in Barcelona, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts and Live in Hyde Park.

So, you may well be wondering why at this point anyone needs yet another live Springsteen album—namely, the new Live from Asbury Park 2024, a three-CD set that features Bruce and the E Street Band at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival.

One reason is that Springsteen’s return to his home turf lends a special flavor to this performance. Way back in 1973, he titled his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.; he opens this one by yelling, “Greetings, Asbury Park!” Then he performs numerous songs that reference his geographical roots, such as “4th of July, Asbury Park,” “Local Hero” (“I was driving through my hometown…”), “Wrecking Ball” (“I was raised…in the swamps of Jersey”) and a show-closing cover of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl,” which he ends with a shouted, “God bless Asbury Park!”

Reinforcing the back-to-my-roots theme, Springsteen features some of the tunes he composed during his early days in and around that town, such as “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?,” “Growing Up,” “Thunder Crack” and “Blinded by the Light,” which he introduces as a song “I wrote about 500 yards north” of the stage where he’s performing. And after playing “Thunder Road,” he gets emotional, telling the audience he recalls his band being “on that street corner when nobody was here, and I didn’t know when I’d see folks in this good town again. So, I just want to take a moment and thank all the people who’ve invested themselves in Asbury Park and brought the city back to life.”

While the hometown vibes help to distinguish this show, a bigger reason to seek out Live from Asbury Park 2024 is its musical diversity and excellence. The 30-song set taps songs from numerous eras and includes “a lot of stuff we haven’t played in a long f*ckin’ time,” as Springsteen puts it. And they’re virtually all superbly performed. The Boss himself has called the concert “one of our top five shows of all time,” and while you could argue that there are lots of contenders for that group, this certainly qualifies as a candidate.

Related: Our review of another 2024 live show

Memorable moments abound, starting with the 9/11-inspired concert opener, “Lonesome Day,” with Soozie Tyrell on violin. Other standouts in the three-and-a-quarter-hour show include virtually all the material mentioned above, plus “Racing in the Street” with Roy Bittan’s long, majestic piano bit in the instrumental second half; a high-octane “Dancing in the Dark”; “Tougher Than the Rest,” with backing vocal by Patti Scialfa; and a wild, supercharged rendition of  “She’s the One.”

Springsteen seems to have loved interacting with his hometown audience. Judging by its response—which included singing the opening verses of “Hungry Heart” and numerous instances of thunderous applause—the feeling was mutual.

The April 18, 2026, release is available in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.