Bob Seger
closed out his
Capitol
contract with
Brand New Morning
, a
singer/songwriter
album quite unlike anything he had yet released. Following its release he moved to the Detroit-based label
Palladium
and returned to hard-driving
rock & roll
with
Smokin' O.P.'s
, 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
Bob Seger & the Last Heard
. 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
Seger
isn't just a first-class bandleader and
rock
songwriter, but that he's a terrific interpreter of other writers' songs. Even well-worn tunes like
"Bo Diddley"
and
"If I Were a Carpenter"
get made fresh by internalizing the hooks, turning them into something fresh and original. That's also true of songs by such contemporaries as
Stephen Stills
(
"Love the One You're With"
) and
Leon Russell
"Humming Bird"
), and he also breathes fire into
blues
stalwarts like
"Let It Rock,"
"Turn on Your Love Light,"
"Jesse James."
closes out with two originals, one new (the fine, but not especially noteworthy
"Someday"
) and one old (the perennial
"Heavy Music"
). 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