Arriving a mere eight years after the decade-in-the-making
Face the Promise
,
Ride Out
nearly feels rushed by
Bob Seger
's latter-day standards. At 34 minutes, it's brief and nearly half of its ten songs were composed by songwriters other than
Seger
, two characteristics that would suggest something of a patchwork job if it weren't for the fact that in the days before the
Silver Bullet Band
Bob
used to regularly split his brief albums between originals and covers. In its construction,
mirrors early albums like
Back in 72
but it comes from the days after the
, the days where Seger surrounded himself with highly paid professional musicians who didn't leave a note out of place. Oddly, even with all these pros aboard here,
feels like the homespun work of an old millionaire rocker, a record that prefers to amiably ramble instead of driving full-speed ahead. Often,
sticks strictly to his wheelhouse -- a charging rendition of
John Hiatt
's "Detroit Made" is textbook
, from its fist-pumping chorus to its rapturous odes to bucket seats -- but he's just as likely to veer into gutbucket blues (the hard-hitting "Hey Gypsy," his best original here) or country story-telling (
Steve Earle
's "The Devil's Right Hand" and
Kasey Chambers
' "Adam and Eve," the two best covers here). Although
might cover too much disparate ground, there's some charm in the fact that
is loose enough to keep his ends untied. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine