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Smokin' O.P.'s
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Smokin' O.P.'s
Current price: $16.99
Barnes and Noble
Smokin' O.P.'s
Current price: $16.99
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closed out his
contract with
, a
album quite unlike anything he had yet released. Following its release he moved to the Detroit-based label
and returned to hard-driving
with
, the polar opposite of
. According to legend, the title stands for "smoking other people's songs," which makes sense since this is a cover album that even covers
. In other words, it's nothing like the intimate, reflective, risky
, but that doesn't matter since it rocks so well and since it reveals that
isn't just a first-class bandleader and
songwriter, but that he's a terrific interpreter of other writers' songs. Even well-worn tunes like
and
get made fresh by internalizing the hooks, turning them into something fresh and original. That's also true of songs by such contemporaries as
(
) and
), and he also breathes fire into
stalwarts like
closes out with two originals, one new (the fine, but not especially noteworthy
) and one old (the perennial
). Neither change the essential character of the album, which is just a really fun, hard-rocking record that bought
some time while reasserting the fact that he could really rock. He could -- and he could rock really well -- which is why
remains a lot of fun, even if it's a relatively minor work in
's canon. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine