Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - It's A Mystery (1995)

A significant segment of the CD-buying public probably thinks of Bob Seger as the TV pitchman for those "like a rock" Chevy pickups. The problem is a little something rubbed off Seger in the process. And now he wants it back. Is that what Seger is referring to when, in "Lock and Load," he complains of "users and fakers" who've caught him in their "schemes"? He now confesses he's "spent years losin' touch of what's right and what's real." Thus it's time to "take a different road and start again." Not so quick, Bob. It is, after all, easier for a 4x4 to pass through the eye of a needle than for a multiplatinum rocker to recapture his erstwhile ideals. Seger fails, of course, but this is a noble try. Here he aims for grittier production here than fans have heard of late, but he remains a meat and potatoes rocker, unwilling to make the occasional stylistic leap contemporaries Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young rely upon to stay fresh. It's a Mystery sounds like a Bob Seger album...nothing more or less. --Steven Stolder