New Seger album worth the wait
09/10/06 - It's the album Bob Seger fans hoped he'd give them. It's certainly the album Bob Seger wanted to make:
Eleven years in the works, "Face the Promise" is assuredly no throwaway effort, its dozen tracks the result
of scrupulous pruning from a body of songs three times as big. It is the sound of Seger aiming to sink his teeth again
into rock 'n' roll, and successfully tearing off a healthy piece.
The guitars are turned up. There's swing in the grooves.
Seger lets loose and lets his voice get dirty. The new album isn't "Beautiful Loser," "Night Moves," "Stranger in Town" or
even "Against the Wind," the 1980 record that began Seger's move into smoother adult rock. Those are the peak moments of an
artist on a roll, empowered by his creative highs and validated by his popular success. If nothing else, "Face the
Promise" performs a vital service by ensuring that his discography doesn't end with 1995's "It's a Mystery," a tepid effort
and the weakest overall collection of his career.
Album opener "Wreck This Heart" promptly sets the tone: Built atop a winding, growling guitar line, it's as assertive musically as it is lyrically ("Am I
talkin' too fast / Am I hard to hear?"), and signals Seger's eagerness to keep the wattage high. But it's also something of
an anomaly. Where "Face the Promise" is largely built on studied contemplations of life today and tomorrow, "Wreck This
Heart" finds Seger revisiting youthful rock abandon.
That casual looseness makes just one other notable appearance, on his much-discussed duet with Kid Rock on Vince Gill's
"Real Mean Bottle," a chugging roadhouse stomper and drinking ode that pairs the two Oakland County neighbors on record for
the first time. Although the lyrics become more earnest elsewhere, the record largely maintains that tough, gnarled musical
edge. Three of the album's best songs -- "Between," "Simplicity" and "Won't Stop" -- are its most raw and organic. The
texture lightens up only for a lovely pair of closing songs: "The Answer's in the Question," featuring lead and harmony vocals
from country crooner Patty Loveless, and "The Long Goodbye," a touching and stirring portrait of Alzheimer's disease.
A group of seasoned Nashville players provides the sonic bedrock, and although the performances occasionally come close to
taking on too much polish for their own good, Seger keeps enough raggedness intact to let the stuff qualify, by any measure,
as rock 'n' roll. Sometimes it's worth the wait.
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