After releasing his stellar live album Nine Tonight, Bob Seger came back with the best album of his career, The Distance. The album is full of vivid tales of the common man. "Even Now" is a soaring rocker while "Makin' Thunderbirds" is a pulsating, Detroit flavored shaker that Bonnie Raitt provides backup vocals for. On Against The Wind, Mr. Seger played a number of song with a country flavor. He goes one step further on Rodney Crowell's "Shame On The Moon". The song has a hypnotic piano and great harmonies and moved up to number two on the charts which at the time was his highest charting single. "Love's The Last To Know" is good ballad while "House Behind A House" shakes along. "Roll Me Away" is classic Seger with tales of freedom and a powerful chorus. "Comin' Home" is a tale of redemption while the closer "Little Victories" is a great portrait of the little moments in everyday life where one triumph's over life's obstacles.

I recently listened to this album for the first time in five years or more and was really impressed with strength of the album. Seven of the nine songs are the type that are not skipped to reach another more favorite song.

The album also features perhaps Seger's best song of his career, "Roll Me Away", and the top notch "Shame On The Moon". The rest of the material is solid rock music that make Seger the best at what he does.

Bob Seger made (and makes) some of the most honest music in the history of rock and roll. This album is not his best work but that just makes it twice as good as the normal rock cd, instead of ten times as good. "Shame on the Moon" is a great song and should've been on his Greatest Hits. The think I like about Seger's cds is that you get great songs that never received any airplay. "Little Victories" falls into that category on this release. Great, honest rock.

By the early '80s, Bob Seger had established himself as a firm proponent of the guitar-heavy, rhythmically driven, classic-rock school of American music. Many consider The Distance to be his final album in that vein, and what a heck of an album it is. This is one to pop in the CD player when you first get in the car and just drive, drive, drive. This album demonstrates all of the musical categories Seger created for himself and went on to dominate. The pure, guitar-driven rockers "Even Now" and "Makin' Thunderbirds," two of Seger's most compelling tunes, start out the album; the latter hearkens back to the Chuck Berry sound he so assiduously assimilated in his earlier days, while the former represents the apex of the Bob Seger sound he went on to create. "Boomtown Blues" powers on in a similar vein, although it slows things down slightly to create (true to its name) a more bluesy feel. "Shame on the Moon," "Love's the Last to Know" and "Comin' Home" showcase another famous side of Seger's talent: the simple, soulful, almost country ballad in the style of "We've Got Tonight." "Roll Me Away," on the other hand, foreshadows a genre Seger would turn to with increasing frequency later in his career: the "rock tale." Here it's a story of a love that died as abruptly as it began, couched within the larger framework of one man's journey to find himself. Lyrically, it's an irresistibly compelling song--although it's admittedly pretty easy to miss the lyrics if you're focusing on the great beat (as I've been guilty of doing). This album has everything that makes Seger great: the simplicity and easy accessibility, the inspired lyrics, and--above all--that great Heart of America sound. It's one of his best efforts and a worthy addition to your collection.

Bob Seger may be the last great rock 'n roller for us old heads (read: his contemporaries). The Distance has some of his best work. It has some of the greatest hard driving rock ever to blast through the speakers. If played in a moving car, "Even Now" is guaranteed to increase your speed by at least ten MPH (actually, I once talked a state trooper out of a ticket by telling him it was the fault of the Bob Seger coming through the tape player!). "Roll Me Away" is the greatest song to accompany a motorcycle ride since "Born to be Wild". This album rates less than five stars, though, because as great as "Even Now", "Roll Me Away" and the classic "Shame on the Moon" are, the rest of the songs are adequate by comparison. Certainly worth the money, though, by any standards.