The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from the general public. Part of the reason was her legendary perfectionism: Williams released records... [+] Read More

The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from the general public. Part of the reason was her legendary perfectionism: Williams released records only infrequently, often taking years to hone both the material and the recordings thereof. Plus, her early catalog was issued on smaller labels that agreed to her insistence on creative control but didn't have the resources or staying power to fully promote her music. Yet her meticulous attention to detail and staunch adherence to her own vision were exactly what helped build her reputation. When Williams was at her best (and she often was), even her simplest songs were rich in literary detail, from her poetic imagery to her flawed, conflicted characters. Her singing voice, whose limitations she readily acknowledged, nonetheless developed into an evocative instrument that seemed entirely appropriate to her material. So if some critics described Williams as "the female Bob Dylan," they may have been oversimplifying things (Townes Van Zandt might be more apt), but the parallels were certainly too strong to ignore.

Williams was born in Lake Charles, LA, on January 26, 1953. Her father was Miller Williams, a literature professor and published poet who passed on not only his love of language, but also of Delta blues and Hank Williams. The family moved frequently, as Miller took teaching posts at colleges around Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and even Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, Lucinda discovered folk music (especially Joan Baez) through her mother and was galvanized into trying her own hand at singing and writing songs after hearing Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Immersed in a college environment, she was also exposed to '60s rock and more challenging singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. She started performing folk songs publicly in New Orleans and during the family's sojourn in Mexico City. In 1969, she was ejected from high school for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and she spent a year working her way through a reading list supplied by her father before leaving home.

Williams performed around New Orleans as a folk artist who mixed covers with traditional-styled originals. In 1974, she relocated to Austin, TX, and became part of that city's burgeoning roots music scene; she later split time between Austin and Houston, and then moved to New York. A demo tape got her the chance to record for the Smithsonian's Folkways label, and she went to Jackson, MS, to lay down her first album at the Malaco studios. Ramblin' on My Mind (later retitled simply Ramblin') was released in 1979 and featured a selection of traditional blues, country, folk, and Cajun songs. Williams returned to Houston to record the follow-up, 1980's Happy Woman Blues. As her first album of original compositions, it was an important step forward, and although it was much more bound by the dictates of tradition than her genre-hopping later work, her talent was already in evidence.

However, it would be some time before that talent was fully realized. Williams flitted between Austin and Houston during the early '80s, then moved to Los Angeles in 1984, where she started to attract some major-label interest. CBS signed her to a development deal in the mid-'80s but wound up passing since neither its rock nor its country divisions knew how to market her; around the same time, a short-lived marriage to drummer Greg Sowders dissolved. Williams eventually caught on with an unlikely partner -- the British indie label Rough Trade, which was historically better known for its punk output. The simply titled Lucinda Williams was released in 1988, and although it didn't make any waves in the mainstream, it received glowing reviews from those who did hear it. With help from guitarist/co-producer Gurf Morlix, Williams' sound had evolved into a seamless blend of country, blues, folk, and rock; while it made perfect sense to roots music enthusiasts, it didn't fit into the rigid tastes of radio programmers. But it was clear that she had found her songwriting voice -- the album brimmed with confidence, and so did its assertive female characters, who seemed to answer only to their own passions.

Many critics hailed Lucinda Williams as a major statement by a major new talent. Rough Trade issued a couple of EPs that featured live performances and material from Lucinda Williams, and Patty Loveless covered "The Night's Too Long" for a Top 20 country hit. However, it would be four years before Williams completed her official follow-up. She signed with RCA for a time but left when she felt that the label was pressuring her to release material she didn't deem ready for public consumption. Instead, she went to the small Elektra-distributed label Chameleon, which finally released Sweet Old World in 1992. A folkier outing than Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World was an unflinching meditation on death, loss, and regret. Even its upbeat moments were colored by songs like the title track and "Pineola," two stunning, heartbreaking accounts of a family friend's suicide (poet Frank Stanford, not, as many listeners assumed, Williams' own brother). Needless to say, the record won rave reviews once again, and Williams toured Australia with Rosanne Cash and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

On that tour, Carpenter decided to record "Passionate Kisses," the key track and statement of purpose from Lucinda Williams. It shot into the country Top Five in 1993 and won its writer a Grammy for Country Song of the Year. Other artists soon started mining Williams' back catalog for material: avowed fan Emmylou Harris recorded "Crescent City" on 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer and cut "Sweet Old World" for her 1995 alternative country landmark Wrecking Ball; plus, Tom Petty covered "Changed the Locks" for 1996's movie-related She's the One. As the buzz around Williams grew, so did anticipation for her next album. With Chameleon having gone under, she signed with Rick Rubin's American Recordings label and began sessions with Morlix again co-producing. Dissatisfied with the results, Williams' rigorous retouchings led to Morlix's departure from the project and her backing band. In 1995, she moved into Harris' neighborhood in Nashville and through Harris hired Steve Earle and his production partner Ray Kennedy. At first, she was so enamored with their work that she re-recorded the entire album from scratch. When it was finished, she decided that the results sounded too produced, and took the record to Los Angeles, where she enlisted Roy Bittan (onetime E Street Band keyboardist) to co-produce a series of overdub sessions that bordered on obsessive. During the long wait for the album, the media began to pay more attention to Williams; some of the coverage was fairly unflattering, painting her as a neurotic control freak, but she always countered that it was unfair to criticize the process if the results were worthwhile.

Rubin mixed the final tracks, but the album was further delayed when he entered into negotiations to sell the American label. Mercury stepped in to purchase the rights to the album, which was finally released in 1998 under the title Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Boasting a bright, contemporary roots rock sound with strong country and blues flavors, not to mention major-label promotional power, the album won universal acclaim, making many critics' year-end Top Ten lists and winning The Village Voice's prestigious Pazz & Jop survey. It also won Williams a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album (despite being the least folk-oriented record in her catalog) and became her first to go gold, proving to doubters that she was not just a songwriter, but a full-fledged recording artist in her own right. After a merger shakeup at Mercury, Williams wound up on the Universal-distributed roots imprint Lost Highway. She was the subject of an extensive, widely acclaimed profile in The New Yorker in 2000, written by Bill Buford, who was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his work; however, Williams and some of her supporters took issue with some of his more objective-minded analysis.

Williams delivered her next album, Essence, in 2001, after a relatively scant wait of just three years. An introspective collection, it often found Williams taking a simpler, more minimalistic lyrical approach and was greeted with rapturous reviews in most quarters. The track "Get Right With God" won Williams her third Grammy, this time for Best Female Rock Vocal, which further consolidated her credibility as a singer, not just a songwriter. Paring down the time between album releases even further, Williams returned in 2003 with World Without Tears, which became her highest-charting effort to date when it debuted in the Top 20. 2005 saw the release of two live recordings, one (Live @ The Fillmore) for Lost Highway and the other (Live from Austin, TX) for New West. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide [-] Hide

A country/hard rock band formed by Illinois native Jason Ringenberg in 1981, Jason and the Scorchers came careening onto the indie rock scene seemingly out of nowhere (truth was, it was Nashville) with a debut EP whose most killer track (among a slew of killer tracks) was a fire-breathing cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie." This... [+] Read More

A country/hard rock band formed by Illinois native Jason Ringenberg in 1981, Jason and the Scorchers came careening onto the indie rock scene seemingly out of nowhere (truth was, it was Nashville) with a debut EP whose most killer track (among a slew of killer tracks) was a fire-breathing cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie." This amalgam of speedy hard rock fused with Ringenberg's decidedly country twang, along with the band's ability to deftly negotiate between Rolling Stones-style stomps and quieter, more melodic acoustic country music, led to Jason and the Scorchers becoming a critically lauded and fairly popular '80s band. Capitalizing quickly on the notoriety brought by their debut EP, the Scorchers kicked out two fine LPs (Lost & Found and Still Standing) that sounded perfect for radio, but not so slick as to sound manufactured. With Ringenberg's yowling voice pushed way up front, the band's sonic power came from the synchronous playing of Nashville rock veterans Warner Hodges (guitar), Jeff Johnson (bass), and Perry Baggs (drums). Sharing similar musical backgrounds that valued the music of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash as much as the Stones or Beatles, these guys could crank out mega-amped hard rock one minute and sound like the Flying Burrito Brothers the next, all of it done with great skill and excitement. Despite their obvious talent, by the release of 1986's Still Standing, it seemed as though the band wasn't going anywhere. They had achieved a modicum of success but weren't able to break through to mass acclaim, partly because they came along just before the explosion of country radio in the late '80s/early '90s. Hence, rock radio was reluctant to play them because they sounded too country, and country radio thought they were too rock; it's an old story that usually spells doom for the band in question. After a three-year break that saw Johnson's departure, the Scorchers released a desultory third album (Thunder and Fire) that sounded like a desperate attempt at hard rock credibility. They broke up soon after. Ringenberg went on to record country-oriented solo work, re-formed the original Scorchers in 1994, and released a modest reunion record (A Blazing Grace) that sounded like the Scorchers of old. Two years later, the reunited Scorchers released Clear Impetuous Morning; Midnight Roads followed in 1998. Rock on Germany appeared three years later. ~ John Dougan, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Arguably the quintessential one-shot band of all time, Cafferty and company (who, back in the early '70s, were simply a hack New England bar band) had their 15 minutes of fame courtesy of a ridiculously overwrought 1983 film called Eddie and the Cruisers (starring Michael Pare). The movie dealt with the suspicious death of a fictional... [+] Read More

Arguably the quintessential one-shot band of all time, Cafferty and company (who, back in the early '70s, were simply a hack New England bar band) had their 15 minutes of fame courtesy of a ridiculously overwrought 1983 film called Eddie and the Cruisers (starring Michael Pare). The movie dealt with the suspicious death of a fictional singer/songwriter, modeled on a conflation of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, who had made the transition from smart rock & roller to serious artist. Seems as though Eddie had recorded a brilliant but unreleased album that fused Chuck Berry-style rock & roll with French Symbolist poetry. A record way ahead of its time, the master tapes of The Dark Side went missing, right around the time of Eddie's "death." Needing a band to supply music for the film, the producers used the Springsteen-ish sounding Cafferty and his clock-punching backup band. With the Springsteen-ish single "On the Dark Side" paving the way, Cafferty led, arguably, the most anonymous band with a hit record in the history of rock & roll. With the movie doing reasonably well in theaters and extremely well on video, sales of Cafferty's album -- which, ironically, had been out for months before the band's involvement with Eddie and the Cruisers and barely caused a murmur -- skyrocketed. But, as the movie faded from the public consciousness, so did Cafferty's imitation of Springsteen. ~ John Dougan, All Music Guide [-] Hide

When Bruce Springsteen finally broke through to national recognition in the fall of 1975 after a decade of trying, critics hailed him as the savior of rock & roll, the single artist who brought together all the exuberance of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded into a '70s style. He rocked as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis, his lyrics... [+] Read More

When Bruce Springsteen finally broke through to national recognition in the fall of 1975 after a decade of trying, critics hailed him as the savior of rock & roll, the single artist who brought together all the exuberance of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded into a '70s style. He rocked as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis, his lyrics were as complicated as Bob Dylan's, and his concerts were near-religious celebrations of all that was best in music. One critic became so enamored that he quit reviewing to become Springsteen's manager.

But the hosannas, when piped through the publicity machine of a major record company, were perceived as hype by a significant part of the public as well as the mainstream media -- Springsteen landed on the covers of Time and Newsweek, but both magazines were covering the phenomenon, not the music. Springsteen's album, Born to Run, became a hit, and he jumped to arena status as a live act, but as many people were turned off by the press campaign as turned on by the records and shows.

Two decades later, however, Springsteen remained an established star who could look back on a career that had produced one of the best-selling albums of all time, sold-out stadium shows, Grammy awards and an Oscar, and a group of imitators who constituted their own subgenre of popular music. If he no longer seemed divine, he remained popular enough for his Greatest Hits album to enter the charts at number one, and he had won over many of those skeptics from 1975.

Growing up in southern New Jersey, Springsteen turned to rock & roll as a teenager and played in a series of bands from the mid-'60s on, varying in style from garage rock to power trio blues-rock. By the early '70s, he was trying his hand at being a folky singer/songwriter in Greenwich Village. But when he was signed to Columbia Records in 1972, he brought into the studio many of the New Jersey-based musicians with whom he'd played over the years.

The result was Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (January 1973), which went unnoticed upon initial release, though Manfred Mann's Earth Band would turn its leadoff track, "Blinded by the Light," into a number one hit four years later. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (September 1973) also failed to sell despite some rave reviews. (Both albums have since gone platinum.)

The following year, Springsteen revised his backup group -- dubbed the E Street Band -- settling on a lineup that included saxophone player Clarence Clemons, second guitarist "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici, pianist Roy Bittan, bassist Garry Tallent, and drummer Max Weinberg. With this unit he barnstormed the country while working on his third and last chance with Columbia. By the time Born to Run (August 1975) was released, the critics and a significant cult audience were with him, and the title song became a Top 40 hit while the album reached the Top Ten.

What Springsteen needed to do in the wake of the hype, of course, was to play and record more to consolidate his position. He was prevented at least from the latter by a former manager, who kept him in court during the next couple of years. Meanwhile, the musical world changed. Part of the reason critics had welcomed Springsteen so enthusiastically in 1975 was that he seemed a return to basic rock & roll values in a world of soft rock, heavy metal, and art rock.

By the time Springsteen returned with his fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town (June 1978), however, the punk/new wave movement had outflanked him, pushing him from the vanguard to the mainstream. Similar sounding heartland rockers such as Bob Seger had appeared, so that Springsteen sounded less like an innovator than a member of an established genre.

Nevertheless, he set about winning fans with an album that found the lost children of his early albums stuck in factory jobs, still longing for some escape. The album was a hit, though it did not match the success of Born to Run. Springsteen returned with the double album The River (October 1980), which topped the charts and featured his first Top Ten hit, "Hungry Heart."

Nobody was calling him a hype anymore, but Springsteen retreated from his expanding success, next recording the low-key album Nebraska (September 1982), a virtual demo tape on vinyl. (Springsteen did not tour to promote the album, and in the interim E Street Band guitarist Van Zandt amicably left the group for a solo career, to be replaced by Nils Lofgren.)

But then came Born in the U.S.A. (June 1984) and a two-year international tour. The album threw off seven hit singles and sold over ten million copies, putting Springsteen in the pop heavens with Michael Jackson and Prince. After touring for more than a year, he released a five-LP/three-CD concert album, Live/1975-85 (November 1986), which topped the charts.

Characteristically, Springsteen returned with a more introverted effort, Tunnel of Love (October 1987), which presaged his divorce from his first wife. (He married a second time to singer Patti Scialfa, who had joined the E Street Band.)

After another marathon tour, Springsteen gave the E Street Band notice in November 1989, breaking up a celebrated unit who had stayed together 15 years. In March 1992, he simultaneously released Human Touch and Lucky Town, and though the albums premiered near the top of the charts, they were less successful with fans than previous efforts. In the fall, Springsteen taped an MTV Unplugged segment (though he plugged in after one song), and the performance was released as an album in Europe in 1993.

Springsteen continued to tour until July 1993. In the fall, he wrote and recorded "Streets of Philadelphia" for the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia, which concerned a lawyer dying of AIDS. The song became a Top Ten hit in 1994, winning the Academy Award for Best Song and cleaning up at the Grammys the following year. At the same time, Springsteen had readied his Greatest Hits album (February 1995), reassembling the E Street Band to record a few new tracks. The album was an immediate best-seller. Springsteen followed it with The Ghost of Tom Joad (November 1995), another low-key, downcast, near-acoustic effort and embarked upon a brief solo tour. In 1999, shortly after his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band (including both Lofgren and Van Zandt on guitars) and embarked on a world tour that lasted until mid-2000, its final dates resulting in the album Live in New York City.

He then made his first new full-length studio album to feature the group as a whole since Born in the U.S.A., and his first album of new studio recordings since The Ghost of Tom Joad, The Rising, released in July 2002. It was followed by another successful tour, and recording sessions for a new album, released as Devils & Dust in 2005. One year later, he released the first covers album of his career, a tribute to the songs of Pete Seeger titled We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Los Lobos were one of America's most distinctive and original bands of the '80s. They may have had a hit with "La Bamba" in 1987, yet that cover barely scratches the surface of their talents. Los Lobos are eclectic in the best sense of the word. While they draw equally from rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, and traditional Spanish and... [+] Read More

Los Lobos were one of America's most distinctive and original bands of the '80s. They may have had a hit with "La Bamba" in 1987, yet that cover barely scratches the surface of their talents. Los Lobos are eclectic in the best sense of the word. While they draw equally from rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music, their music never sounds forced or self-conscious. Instead, all of their influences become one graceful, gritty sound. From their very first recordings, their rich musicality was apparent; on nearly every subsequent record, they have found ways to redefine and expand their sound, without ever straying from the musical traditions that form the heart and soul of the band.

After releasing an independent EP in the late '70s and an EP in 1983, los Lobos delivered their first major-label album, How Will the Wolf Survive?, in 1984; it received an enormous amount of critical acclaim, as well as a dedicated following of fans. In the next four years, they released a marginally successful attempt to make their wildly eclectic sound palatable for a pop audience (By the Light of the Moon), a soundtrack of old Ritchie Valens songs that was a hit (La Bamba), and an album of traditional Mexican music (La Pistola y el Corazón). The band took two years off and returned with The Neighborhood in 1990; the album was a varied and powerful rock & roll record that was better than anything they had released in six years. Kiko, released in 1992, brought the band into more experimental territory, without ever abandoning their graceful songwriting.

The band celebrated their 20-year anniversary with Just Another Band from East L.A., a modestly titled two-CD set that featured most of their biggest singles and recognized songs. It also had rare tracks from their first album, outtakes, and live tracks that fans had been waiting for. They didn't appear together on record again until 1995, when they released the children's record Papa's Dream on Music for Little People Records. They also scored the film Desperado and contributed tracks to several other soundtracks and tribute albums.

Their last release for Warner Bros. came in the form of 1996's Colossal Head, another critically acclaimed album that still failed to excite the label enough to keep them on the roster. Feeling dejected, they left one another to concentrate on side projects, like Soul Disguise, Houndog, and the Latin Playboys. The latter was the most dedicated project of the bunch, eventually becoming another regular group for David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez, on top of their duties for los Lobos, after previously releasing an album in the early '90s.

Los Lobos came back together in 1999, when they recorded and released their first record for Hollywood Records, This Time. Another Los Angeles-themed gem from the group, it didn't perform up to the label's liking and they only managed to deliver one more record for the company, the re-release of 1977's Del Este de los Angeles. Rhino/Warner Archives released the Cancionero: Mas y Mas box set the following year, but despite the career retrospective, they were still together and came back on Mammoth Records for the Good Morning Aztlan release in 2002. Two years later, artists such as Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, and Mavis Staples joined los Lobos for The Ride.

In 2004, as los Lobos celebrated 30 years in the music business, they recorded a pair of sold-out shows in San Francisco, which became the basis for a live album and DVD, Live at the Fillmore, remarkably the veteran group's first "live" set. Wolf Tracks: The Best of los Lobos and the all-new The Town and the City arrived in 2006. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide

When the BoDeans appeared in 1986 with their first album, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, they immediately were filed under "roots rock" (a popular term of the day) because of the Western twang in their guitars, their bouncy beat, and their simple, neo-rockabilly approach to songwriting, not to mention the production of T-Bone Burnett. They led off... [+] Read More

When the BoDeans appeared in 1986 with their first album, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, they immediately were filed under "roots rock" (a popular term of the day) because of the Western twang in their guitars, their bouncy beat, and their simple, neo-rockabilly approach to songwriting, not to mention the production of T-Bone Burnett. They led off the album with "She's a Runaway," a song of spousal abuse and revenge that indicated a higher social consciousness than much of the rest of the album, which was typified by "Misery," in which the singer laments that his girlfriend sleeps around. At their best, on "She's a Runaway," "Fadeaway," and "Angels," the BoDeans came up with infectious riffs and made maximum use of the sweet-and-sour vocal interaction between the conventional voice of Kurt Neumann and Sammy Llanas' distinctive nasal whine. Much of the album was slight, but there was enough of an individual sound to the better material to think of the BoDeans as a band of considerable promise. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide [-] Hide

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Night Moves was in the pipeline when Live Bullet hit, and wound up eclipsing the double live set anyway, so Stranger in Town is really the record where Bob Seger started grasping the changes that happened when he became a star. It happened when he was old enough to have already formed his character. Even as celebrity creeps in, as on "Hollywood... [+] Read More

Night Moves was in the pipeline when Live Bullet hit, and wound up eclipsing the double live set anyway, so Stranger in Town is really the record where Bob Seger started grasping the changes that happened when he became a star. It happened when he was old enough to have already formed his character. Even as celebrity creeps in, as on "Hollywood Nights," Seger remains a middle-class, Midwestern rocker, celebrating "Old Time Rock & Roll," realizing old flames are still the same, and still feeling like a number. Musically, it's as lively as Night Moves, rocking even harder in some places and being equally as introspective in the acoustic numbers. If it doesn't feel as revelatory as that record, in many ways it does feel like a stronger set of songs. Yes, musically, it doesn't offer any revelations, but it still feels impassioned, both in its performances and songs, and it's still one of the great rock records of its era. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Damn the Torpedoes wasn't simply a culmination of Tom Petty's art; it happened to be a huge success, enabling him to call the shots on its successor, Hard Promises. Infamously, he used his first album as a star to challenge the record industry's practice of charging more for A-list artists, demanding that Hard Promises should be listed for less... [+] Read More

Damn the Torpedoes wasn't simply a culmination of Tom Petty's art; it happened to be a huge success, enabling him to call the shots on its successor, Hard Promises. Infamously, he used his first album as a star to challenge the record industry's practice of charging more for A-list artists, demanding that Hard Promises should be listed for less than most records by an artist of his stature, but if that was the only thing notable about the album, it would have disappeared like Long After Dark. Instead, it offered a reaffirmation that Damn the Torpedoes wasn't a fluke. There's not much new on the surface, since it continues the sound of its predecessor, but it's filled with great songwriting, something that's as difficult to achieve as a distinctive sound. The opener, "The Waiting," became the best-known song on the record, but there's no discounting "A Woman in Love (It's Not Me)," "Nightwatchman," "Kings Road," "Insider," and "The Criminal Kind," album tracks that would become fan favorites. If Hard Promises doesn't have the sweep of Damn the Torpedoes, that's because its predecessor was blessed with good timing and an unusually strong set of songs. Hard Promises isn't quite so epochal, yet it has a tremendous set of songs and a unified sound that makes it one of Petty's finest records. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Bob Seger recorded the bulk of Night Moves before Live Bullet brought him his first genuine success, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's similar in spirit to the introspective Beautiful Loser, even if it rocks harder and longer. Throughout much of the album, he's coming to grips with being on the other side of 30 and still rocking. He... [+] Read More

Bob Seger recorded the bulk of Night Moves before Live Bullet brought him his first genuine success, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's similar in spirit to the introspective Beautiful Loser, even if it rocks harder and longer. Throughout much of the album, he's coming to grips with being on the other side of 30 and still rocking. He floats back in time, turning in high-school memories, remembering when wandering down "Mainstreet" was the highlight of an evening, covering a rockabilly favorite in "Mary Lou." Stylistically, there's not much change since Beautiful Loser, but the difference is that Seger and his Silver Bullet Band -- who turn in their first studio album here -- sound intense and ferocious, and the songs are subtly varied. Yes, this is all hard rock, but the acoustic ballads reveal the influence of Dylan and Van Morrison, filtered through a Midwestern sensibility, and the rockers reveal more of Seger's personality than ever. Seger may have been this consistent before (on Seven, for example), but the mood had never been as successfully varied, nor had his songwriting been as consistent, intimate, and personal. Thankfully, this was delivered to a mass audience eager for Seger, and it not only became a hit, but one of the universally acknowledged high points of late-'70s rock & roll. And, because of his passion and craft, it remains a thoroughly terrific record years later. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide