Bob Seger’s 17th studio album, Ride Out, arrives eight years after his previous platinum selling album Face The Promise. This record by the rock icon who gave us “Night Moves,” “Hollywood Nights,’ and so many others, mixes originals with covers over the course of 15 songs he produced.
John Hiatt’s “Detroit Made,” the album’s opener, is a riotous tune about loving a classic American-made car. “The Devil’s Right Hand,” by Steve Earl, is tight, slightly sardonic, and features some big beautiful background vocals in the chorus from Laura Creamer, Shaun Murphy, and Barbara Payton. Jim “Moose” Brown makes the organ on this one is swirly perfect.
There’s a metallic bass strut, very much in the vein of the classic “Her Strut,” pushing the title track, a fun tune featuring a staccato vocal from Seger. “It’s Your World” presents a cringe-worthy lyric about the mess the world’s in, but the players here – bassist Glenn Worf, Jim “Moose” Brown on piano, and drummer Chad Cromwell – provide a good bed to what is pretty much a throw-away tune. Ironically, it’s a tune I heard Seger talk about, so I imagine it will get lots of attention because of its lyric,
There’s a nice, soft fiddle on the mid-tempo “All Of The Roads,” with the backing vocals again lifting it to a whole other height, very much like the backing female vocals do on the what-could-have-been-too-simple “Night Moves.” This is a formula Seger mines very well.
“You Take Me In” is basically an acoustic guitar/vocal ballad, a pretty love song with some Springsteenian “Secret Garden”-like synth string lines going for it. “Gates Of Eden” is big rock gospel, the best example of Seger and his backing singers mixing it up. You can just hear this one sailing out inside an arena. There’s also some effective simple slide lines played by Rob McNelley. There’s a deluxe version with an additional three tunes, “Listen,” “Fireman’s Talkin'” and “Let The Rivers Run.”
Ride Out is a decent effort from Seger and, from what I’ve heard, it could be his last. He seems to be hitting lots of the same lyric territory, and I was waiting for him to really break out and rock. However, the band and singers behind him are very good, and he himself still sings with as much passion as he ever has. Maybe the creative juices were flowing strong enough to leave a few leftovers for another album. We’ll see.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
