CD Reviews

Bob Seger

Face the Promise | Capitol

By MIKAEL WOOD | January 22, 2007

3.0 Stars

“I will answer the wind,” Bob Seger sings in “Wait for Me,” a cut from his first new studio album in more than a decade. The lyric, of course, is a sort of September-of-my-years nod to “Against the Wind,” one of the biggest hits in Seger’s deep catalogue of meat-and-potatoes Motor City rock, and so is the music, which pairs rambling roadhouse piano with bar-band guitar in the instantly identifiable way Seger’s been doing for years. (Nobody makes songs about wind sound more windswept.) Face the Promise is full of echoes and reverberations, but because Seger has honed his craft to such a silver-bullet point, the album never feels like a retread; as on John Fogerty’s underrated Deja Vu All Over Again from 2004, roots-rock tradition seems renewed in Seger’s hands. Promise does feature one concession to record-biz currency in “Real Mean Bottle,” a borderline-corny duet with fellow Michigander Kid Rock. But Seger hardly needs help rocking out: “Between,” one of the most potent tunes here, winds itself into a hard-swinging Middle Eastern jam.

Bob Seger | TD Banknorth Garden, 100 Legends Way, Boston | January 27 | 8 pm | 617.931.2000

Too many shows
If this winter’s concert scene were a crazy tag-team wrestling match, rock would be the ass-kicking king of the ring.
Forward into the past!
Could it be just a coincidence that as I sit here writing this, a grizzled Bob Seger is gearing up for the release of Face the Promise , the Detroit rocker’s first proper studio album in, oh, forever and a day? The Lemonheads, "No Backbone" (mp3)
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Recovery projections
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Bob Seger, Songs from Face the Promise

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