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
Brand New Morning. 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
Brand New Morning, 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 and
rock stalwarts like
"Let It Rock," "Turn on Your Love Light," and
"Jesse James." Smokin' O.P.'s 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
Seger some time while reasserting the fact that he could really rock. He could -- and he could rock really well -- which is why
Smokin' O.P.'s remains a lot of fun, even if it's a relatively minor work in
Seger's canon. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
![Heartbreaker [Deluxe Version]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0811790026480_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "Heartbreaker [Deluxe Version]")
![The Strange Case Of... [Bonus Track]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0075678761669_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "The Strange Case Of... [Bonus Track]")
