Lost Tracks and Rare Cuts is an unauthorized collection of My Bloody Valentine (MBV) rarities. Among these are “Sugar,” one of the B-sides to the Only Shallow single and a longer version of the track “Glider” from the Glider EP. “Cowboy Song,” “Good for You,” “Just Like Us” (more commonly known as “Kevin Song”) and “The Time of Day” (also commonly known as “Bilinda Song”) are songs believed to have been included as bonus tracks in an unreleased box set of reissued My Bloody Valentine material.

There’s also the 7-inch Instrumental single here in its entirety, both sides A and B. Rounding out the collection are two cover songs My Bloody Valentine performed after the release of their critically-acclaimed 1991 album Loveless. Louis Armstrong’s “We Have All the Time in the World” and Wire’s “Map Ref 41°N 93°W” are covered here.

The preceding tracks are generally very much worth getting for any My Bloody Valentine fan. They all sound different, due to coming from different eras of the band’s constantly changing sound. The quality often varies, as only five of these tracks were released officially.

Therein lies the main problem. I’d like to note this bootleg was released in both vinyl and CD, which is very nice work for a bootleg. I grabbed a high quality rip of the CD and unfortunately found out that it somehow sounded very noticeably worse than some of the tracks I had already had. Even though those tracks were in a lower bitrate, the source was better. I cannot speak for the vinyl, but under almost any circumstances it would most likely sound more or less the same.

As a sidenote, it seems the track titles for “Just Like Us” and “The Time of Day” were invented by the bootleggers, as I have never seen these tracks called such other than the names mentioned in the beginning of this review. And although the lyrics as usual are difficult to make out, I can’t say I hear the alleged titles anywhere at all in the song. Not a big deal they made up the names, considering they didn’t really have ones to begin with, but awkward.

So my main problem lies not within the tracks, which are very much worth getting and rank among some of MBV’s best (mainly “Sugar,” “Cowboy Song,” “Just Like Us,” “The Time of Day,” “Map Ref 41°N 93°W,” and “We Have All the Time in the World”) but with the sound quality itself. I hardly put in any effort to find the higher quality versions of the tracks I already had (which were under the album/bootleg title “Unreleased & Rarities,” but I’m not sure if that’s an actual bootleg) and was disappointed in this bootleg’s sound. As one might figure, the officially released tracks (“Sugar,” “Map Reference,” both “Instrumentals,” and “We Have All the Time in the World”) are in much better quality.

Worth getting for such a concise collection of great My Bloody Valentine odds and ends, but some more passionate listeners might want to look elsewhere for higher-quality versions of these tracks.