On the first side, the only track that I'm not too wild about is "Hometown Blues," a somewhat anonymous boogie shuffle that doesn't really highlight the band's strengths, but even that one doesn't fall much below the threshold of "pleasant fun," and the rest is kind of a blast. The opening "Rockin' Around (With You)" highlights the tight rhythm section (Ron Blair on bass, Stan Lynch on drums), with lightly chugging guitars and some synthesizer sprinkled in the background, and with a vocal delivery that balances between long held-out sounds and short frantic sounds in a fascinating way. The top-40 hit "Breakdown" is a mid-tempo number with great moody electric piano (I assume from Benmont Tench, the band's regular keyboardist) throughout, and with a tense verse, an energetic chorus, and the ever-lingering threat of a big guitar break that never comes (which actually proves a good thing because the song's tension never dissipates). "The Wild One, Forever" has a big anthemic feel that totally predicts "Free Fallin'" in the opening, but it never gets to a big fat chorus (there is a chorus but it's not what you'd expect if know Petty primarily from his biggest hits), and at the very least I find this variation on song structure intriguing. The side closes with another top-40 hit (only in the UK, it wasn't released as a single in the US) in "Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll," and it's another fun song in the 2:15-2:45 range, this time with a fine minimalist guitar break that fits just perfectly.

On the second side, the best and best-known song is the closing "American Girl" (yet another top-40 hit in the UK) one of the band's best examples of taking the style and sound of the Byrds and remaking it into something new, with both Petty's voice and the Petty and Campbell's guitars emulating Roger McGuinn as closely as possible, but doing so over a Bo Diddley beat that the Byrds typically avoided using. The main verse melody is a delight, but my favorite parts are the mid-tempo mid-song breakdown and the ecstatic guitar playing over the accelerating tempo at the end. Don't sleep on the other side-two songs, though; from the beginning Petty's ability to fill out his albums with good deep cuts to supplement his singles was undeniable. "Strangered in the Night" is an intense reworking of "Stuck in the Middle With You" (h/t Jeff Blehar for that one) with terrific slide guitar; "Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)" has a grumbling stomping mid-tempo groove and a fascinating Petty vocal (he seems to be going for menacing, and it doesn't really suit his voice in those terms, but what he ends up producing with his vocal approach is effective all the same); "Mystery Man" takes the band's style on the rest of the album and adds a bit of country flavor (and where Petty's delivery betrays his North Florida heritage more fully than elsewhere on the album); and "Luna" is a weird slow moody number with a fascinating mix of keyboards (especially that slow ascending synth), and if it never especially goes anywhere, it also produces an atmosphere unlike anything else on the album, to great effect.

In short, this is a good album, like all early Tom Petty albums. I couldn't quite get myself to bring the rating up to a B (no matter how much I enjoy it I still can't shake the word "slight" out of my mind when listening to this), but the rating it gets is solid, and I can't see a situation where somebody would casually enjoy Tom Petty and not enjoy this album. Plus, if you get this one and somehow don't like it, then you can save your time and money going forward, because there's a good chance Tom Petty just won't be for you.

For me, each of the two sides follows a similar pattern of starting off pretty strong, then taking a dip in quality that I nonetheless mostly enjoy. On the first side, "When the Time Comes" gets things off to a menacing and energetic start, with terrific guitar interplay (mixing the grumbling with the bright) supporting a surprisingly catchy vocal part, and the mid-section would probably rank among my favorite stretches in Petty's 70s albums. On the second side, the minor hits "I Need to Know" and "Listen to Her Heart" (which both made the Greatest Hits album) showcase both of Petty's preferred songwriting approaches at this point; "I Need to Know" is another menacing energetic melodic rocker, while "Listen to Her Heart" is another showcase of the band's ability to bring Byrds-like jangle into the late 70s in a way that manages to feel at least somewhat fresh. I personally prefer "I Need to Know" because of the cool way the vocal parts seem to echo and the great guitar solo in the middle, but I enjoy both plenty.

That leaves seven songs in total, and they can all be classified as "fine" to varying degrees (the title track is kind of a tuneless mess but it's so energetic and assured that I end up ignoring that). On the first side, I find myself most attracted to "Hurt," which for whatever reason sounds to me like a cross between Petty and a Derek and the Dominos song, and among the others on the side the aspects that interest me most are how Petty manages to sound both like himself and like others when singing (Petty sounds like McGuinn circa the Untitled era of the Byrds in the swampy rock-ballad "Magnolia," and he sounds kinda like contemporary Ray Davies in "Too Much Ain't Enough"). One the second side, "No Second Thoughts" weirdly reminds me of "Factory Girl" (from the Rolling Stones) with a different arrangement, which isn't the worst thing in the world, and both "Restless" and "Baby's a Rock'n'Roller" are basic rock'n'roll songs that still manage to sound like they're not redundant in the world of basic rock'n'roll songs.

In terms of my overall reaction to this, I'm somewhat fascinated at how my attitude towards this vascillates depending on my mood. Sometimes when I listen to this, I can't help but notice that this album sounds a little dead in terms of inspiration, and when I look at the list of tracks that I have strong feelings towards vs ones I don't I feel inclined to go lower than the debut in terms of a grade. Sometimes when I listen to this, though, the terrific playing and the energy totally suck me in, and I find myself consider giving it a higher grade than the debut. Ultimately, then, I give this the same grade as the debut, even if it's a somewhat qualified one (from both directions), and this is definitely a case where I could find myself potentially agreeing with arguments both to give it a significantly higher grade and a significantly lower one.

At least part of the extra love this album gets comes from how it starts with two of Petty's best songs to this point. "Refugee" is an absolute monster of an opener, an epic arena-rock stomper in 3 minutes with a giant chorus that never sounds tacky and an instrumental passage that blends minimalist organ and minimalist guitar where a less restrained band might have deployed unnecessary guitar wank. The follow-up, "Here Comes My Girl," blends a low-key but absolutely fascinating instrumental track with a vocal delivery with three distinct sections: a spoken section, a minimally sung section that largely turns into yelling on the same note, and a pretty Byrds-ian chorus with Petty at his most delicate and gentle. These tracks show that Petty (and his band) had, on some level, taken a clear leap when it came to songwriting and arrangements, and the corresponding leap in production quality due to bringing on Jimmy Iovine to help out Petty becomes immediately apparent here.

The rest of the first side is quite strong as well. "Even the Losers," after an amusing false start, turns into a marvelous up-tempo pop-rocker with a terrific chorus and a GREAT guitar solo, and the song just sounds so good (the organ and drums sound FANTASTIC on this song) that I totally get why it's so highly regarded my so many fans. "Shadow of a Doubt (The Complex Kid)" has Petty taking on a vocal approach that weirdly sounds like a cross of Dylan and Davies (while still somehow sounding like himself), to good effect, and it's another interesting and memorable pop-rocker with a nice guitar-solo (and with some nice keyboard flourishes near the end). And finally, "Century City" absolutely ROARS, and even if it doesn't have especially memorable sung parts other than when the backing vocals are singing the title track, the instrumental parts are like a seemingly unstoppable train of energy and drive, and this song is a total blast to hear in a car (oddly, even though it sounds great live, it's also one where the improvement from studio to live is less striking than maybe with some other tracks).

So the first side is great! It might be the best side Petty ever did! But the second side ... well, it ends on a pretty high note. "Louisiana Rain" is an anthemic country ballad that lasts a whopping 6 minutes (an eternity for Petty, though a minute of that is an odd synth-heavy introduction that has no connection to the rest of the song), and the vocal delivery is so passionate and the slide guitar so lovely that I can mostly overlook how it makes me want to start singing both "Lodi" and "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" when listening to it. It's a really strong closer that seemingly gives the album the epic sweep necessary to vault it (in combination with the super strong first side) into a tier with great albums of its era and maybe beyond. Unfortunately, the other three songs on this side do pretty little for me, at least by Petty standards. "Don't Do Me Like That" was actually the album's lead single and the band's biggest yet, but while I find the mix of piano and organ pretty fun, there's something about the melody that I can't help but find tacky in a pretty generic late 70s and early 80s way (when I read that Petty had originally thought about giving this song to The J. Geils Band it made perfect sense, because the song reminds me a lot of "Centerfold," which I've never especially liked). "You Tell Me" sounds weirdly to me like something that would have been one of the less notable songs on It's Only Rock'n'Roll had it been made 5 years earlier (the specific production details are much more 1979 than 1974 but I feel like the song at its core would fit there), and finally, for all of the lively energy and fun piano that make "What Are You Doin' In My Life?" amusing when on, it always ends up striking me as a pale retread of "Century City," and by this point in listening I always feel a little disappointed after the album got off to such a great start.

So ok, I don't think this album quite lives up to its full billing, and yet I still actually strongly considered giving this a rating of a C just because the first side is so flabbergasting. As is, this still ranks among the top handful of Petty albums and as one that even a casual fan should own beyond just Full Moon Fever and Greatest Hits (the other initial albums, as good as they are, are definitely "next step" albums more than foundation pieces). Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go blast "Century City" one more time.

The big lasting hit from the album (and the sole contribution to Greatest Hits) is the opening "The Waiting," a song that sounds like the biggest Byrds apeing in the universe for exactly 7 seconds but then becomes Petty's own thereafter, with a gentle lovely verse melody that builds into exuberant "yeah yeah!!" vocals that lead into an astounding chorus, while Campbell's guitar parts shimmer and glide like nothing else. Almost as great, though, is "The Criminal Kind," a song that's essentially the opposite of "The Waiting," built around dirty slide guitars and organs and Petty doing an ideal version of 80s Dylan that 80s Dylan himself rarely achieved in the studio. Maybe the vocal melody isn't among Petty's most memorable, but I just get so sucked into the groove and the overall sound that I hardly mind.

So that's two tracks. The other eight, for me, all fall somewhere in the Petty second tier I mentioned in the introduction, meaning that, even if they don't wow me, they each make me notice something good about them. Oddly enough, the one that I'd now consider the best of the bunch, "Nightwatchman," is one that I only ended up really noticing because it led off the Live Anthology set, but it's a treat, built around a fascinating groove in the drums and the rhythm guitar, about somebody who's currently working a dead-end job but knows he could be a great man. Of the rest, without mentioning every track, I'd say the standouts are "A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)," which could have been a really trashy 80s arena-rocker in the hands of a band with less taste, but sounds gritty and passionate here; "A Thing About You," a punchy up-tempo pop-rocker with an unforgettable chorus; and the closing ballad "You Can Still Change Your Mind" (with Stevie Nicks on backing vocals), where Petty does his very best to sound like contemporary Ray Davies over a simple keyboard-centric backing track and which somehow sounds very effective and very disarming as a closer (the earlier ballad "insider," which features Nicks equally with Petty, is less memorable but decent). "Letting You Go" is also quite nice, a gentle pop song with lots of organ.

Is my grade too high? Maybe, and yet, I once again find that listening to this album tends to leave me in a much better mood at the end than when I start, and the solid baseline quality of the bulk + the amazing hits is enough make me feel like a lower grade would be silly. If you like classic Petty, and you probably should, then you should get this, because it sounds like classic Petty, even if most of it isn't "classic" in the fullest sense of the word.

PS: The Simpsons episode in which Homer gets into guns has a sequence that makes amazing use of "The Waiting," and you've never seen it you should seek it out (it also has some hilarious jokes about how America views soccer vs how the rest of the world views soccer).

The big hits from the album do a good job of providing a clear picture of the two competing aspects of this album, and I enjoy both plenty. "You Got Lucky" (which made the Greatest Hits album) is a somber-yet-anthemic synth pop number (with only the slightest bit of guitar for contrast), totally different from anything the band had done to this point (and not really like what the band would do in the future), and while I could absolutely understand a Petty fan finding it ugly and jarring, I enjoy this kind of bleak synth-heavy mood music plenty. I'll admit that it does have a bit of a feel of "holy crap we have to do something to sound contemporary, uh the kids like synths right?" that might have seemed crass at the time, but in retrospect this strikes me as a fine example of early 80s synth pop. On the other side, then, is "Change of Heart" (which inexplicably didn't make the Greatest Hits album), which is a strong contender for his best song to this point (and maybe his best song ever). The verses are angry and intense (featuring Tom accentuating the nastier aspects of his voice to great effect), the chorus is long and complex but memorable as hell (and with a fascinating mix of vocal tones), and in just 3:15 it creates a picture of a very layered person with very complicated emotions.

Now, being a Petty album, the rest of the album is mostly songs that I consider middling to pretty good, but there are some other clear standouts. "Deliver Me" may be somewhat Petty-by-numbers in both the verses and in the chorus, but this is a top-notch Petty-by-numbers chorus, and the other parts of the song are good enough. "Finding Out" is another instance of Petty finishing the first half with a speedy, super-energetic big anthemic rocker, but it's another winner in that category, and if you can listen to this in the car on a highway without suddenly looking down and realizing you're going 10 MPH faster than you planned, you've got a lot of restraint within you. And then there's "Straight Into Darkness," a fascinating mix of uplifting and downbeat moods with one hell of a simple Byrds-ish guitar bit at the beginning of each chorus and some of the absolute best production found yet on a Petty album.

That leaves five songs (half of the album), and, well, ok, this is where my enthusiasm for the album dips a little bit. I quite like how the album begins and ends, even if I don't quite love either song: the opening "A One Story Town" has some interesting layering of the guitars and strong production, while the closing synth-heavy ballad "A Wasted Life" is more atmosphere than melody but is weirdly intriguing, especially in Petty's wordless "ow ow ow" bits in the chorus. The other three are a little less rousing, I'll admit; "The Same Old You" and "Between Two Worlds" are pretty rote rockers by Petty standards (and the latter is way longer than it has any reason to), and "We Stand a Chance" is an interesting attempt to take the standard grumbly Petty rocker pattern and adapt it into something a little more deliberately contemporary than usual but that doesn't entirely work (it doesn't entirely fail, though). Come to think of it, four of these five songs are in the second half of the album, which I guess doesn't allow the album to leave the best impression on completion, so if somebody wanted to dock the album on those grounds I'd understand.

With that said, the highs on this album are high enough (and plentiful enough) that even a noticeable dip at the end can't budge me off of this rating. There are some differences here and there between this and what came before, but some of those differences are good ones, and if you like Petty and don't light 80s touches here and there, then there's a good chance you'll like this about as much as what came before.

I wouldn't quite say that the first half of the album is flawless, but it's very interesting and a lot of fun, and it's enough to compensate for a somewhat lackluster second half. The opening "Rebels" is famous for making Petty mad enough to punch a wall and severely damage his left hand (he hated that the band couldn't get an arrangement that sounded better than his original demo tape version of the song), and it's not typically held up as one of his better songs, but for whatever objections I might feel towards the lyrics, the song is full of emotion and driving energy, and I really like the rising horns in the chorus. The next song, "It Ain't Nothing to Me," is 5 minutes of 80s funk rock built around call-and-response verses and a more conventional chorus, and while it has absolutely nothing in common with Petty to this point, I love it every time it's on; there's just so much energy that I can't help myself. The album's most famous song, "Don't Come Around Here No More," is a weird neo-psychedelic song with sitar and odd harmonies complemented by droning synths and nervous drum machines, and once again it's a blast even if it once again has nothing at all to do with the general image of Petty. Closing out the first half, then, is the title track, one of the album's few glimpses into the concept as it was originally intended, and it's fine; it's a slow, drawling, hickish piano-heavy, orchestrated adult-contemporary ballad, which might well sound like hell based on the description, but even if it's my least favorite on the side by a good distance I still basically like it. An entire album like this would have been an incredible drag, but as one track it's a nice respite.

Unfortunately, the second half is mostly full of songs (with one exception) that just don't make much impression on me, for better or worse, apart from the lyrical conceit of "Spike" (about Southern rednecks beating up a punk), and even that one has music that's at least decent so that it doesn't stand out as a total trainwreck. The closing "The Best of Everything" is a nice horn-heavy ballad that outdoes Springsteen at his own game (I like Springsteen more now than I used to but I'd say that this would have been in his first or second tier for sure), so the album at least goes out on a strong note, but otherwise, the second half sounds more or less like typical Petty but filtered through the 80s and somehow made bland. I don't mind hearing them once in a while, but more than that would be a waste of time when I could just listen to "It Ain't Nothing to Me" again.

I can totally understand putting this one off as long as possible; "Don't Come Around Here No More" is a really weird inclusion to Greatest Hits, and the album's reputation put me off of giving this a good listen for a very long time. Nonetheless, even if this album lacks the consistency (in style and quality) of its predecessors, it nonetheless has some very high points and a level of variety that previous albums lacked. If this had been made by hypothetical up-and-coming songwriter Dom Beatty and not by Tom Petty it would have been remembered more fondly.

One somewhat interesting aspect of this album is that it contains a lot of covers, and these vary somewhat based on when they were recorded. I quite enjoy the duet from 1981 with Stevie Nicks on "Needles and Pins" (she also appears on a 1981 performance of "Insider"), and the 1978 performance of "Don't Bring Me Down" by Goffin & King and the 1980 performance of "Stories We Could Tell" from The Everly Brothers are pretty delightful in their own right. On the other hand, the opening cover of "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" doesn't come close to living up to the Byrds original (it's fine but I'm in no hurry to hear it again), and the 9+ minute version of "Shout" near the end of the set is fun for about 4 minutes and then becomes unfathomably tedious.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "don't bother with this album," but I would say that a Petty fan shouldn't even consider getting this until they've heard The Live Anthology, and even then to approach this album as a curiosity and not as something essential. I can absolutely see a scenario, after all, where somebody would hear this and then get the sense that Petty's reputation as a live performer is grossly overrated, and that would be a shame.

The album's hit (ignored for Greatest Hits, though later included on other compilations) was "Jammin' Me," written with Bob Dylan and featuring lyrics that are simultaneously dated (due to all of the specific references to relevant 80s cultural figures) and timeless (due to the general concept of media overload that now seems astoundingly prescient). Musically, it's a fine rocker, very much in line with rockers from the band's first five albums, so fans of Petty's earlier work will find this a nice entry point to the album. The next track ("Runaway Train"), though, might have been a typical solid Petty pop-rocker at its core, but it's covered in typical 80s production that might make it off-putting to many (not to me, though, I think the song is really nice). From there, the best remaining song is "My Life/Your World," which sounds more like Dire Straits than like Tom Petty to this point, but it turns out that Petty can do a terrific interpretation of Knopfler if needed, and the song is a blast.

Beyond these tracks, the album lacks clear standouts, but I still enjoy this material in aggregate. If I had to pick out highlights, I guess I'd pick "The Damage You've Done" (despite the 80s production), "All Mixed Up" (despite the REALLY 80s production), "A Self Made Man" (which vaguely sounds like a somewhat undercooked rocker Dylan might have done around this time but somehow better), and "How Many More Days" (which has some tasty guitars and an anthemic feel I enjoy), but there really isn't a huge gap between the "best" and "worst" songs in this bunch. Petty just didn't write bad songs, and the Heartbreakers just didn't perform bad songs; he might have written songs that were less fleshed out and less striking than others, but between his instincts and the band's verve it's hard to imagine a Petty song from his first decade that would make me not want to hear it again.

If you're looking for reasons to hate this album, you can probably find them; Petty's career doesn't really lose much if we pretend this album never happened, and it definitely has a weaker sense of the band's identity than anything the band had done to this point. Nonetheless, this is very far from an embarrassment, and besides that every Petty fan should have "Jammin' Me" and "My Life/Your World" lying around somewhere.

At its core, this album is a bunch of pop/folk/country/boogie-woogie songs, with lots of guitar and with standard Jeff Lynne production, and either you're going to like this or you're not. Of the ten songs here, five strike me as clear standouts, and the other five are basically fine. Standout one is the aforementioned "Handle With Care," which not surprisingly sounds like a typical contemporary guitar-heavy Harrisong at its core, but which becomes something absolutely majestic when Orbison comes in with his heavenly ascending vocal part in the bridge, then something grittier when Dylan comes in with his bridge. Standout two is "Not Alone Any More," written by Lynne and featuring a GREAT operatic lead vocal from Orbison (and nice backing vocals from the rest); the rhythmic guitar-heavy arrangement is delightful as well, especially when the descending organ appears. Standout three is "Margarita," which starts off sounding like a rewrite of "Let My Love Open the Door" (the Pete Townshend solo number) but then turns into an up-tempo brassy Dylan-sung number with great steel guitar popping in here and there. Standout four is "Tweeter and the Monkey Man," the best song Dylan had written in years; in one sense, it's a parody/homage to Springsteen (the lyrics have lots of Springsteen references, explicit and implicit), but the lyrics are also surreal in a way that's 100% Dylan, and the song's arrangement, combining a pounding-but-not-overbearing drum part with a great mix of horns and keyboards and gritty guitars, is the album's best. And finally, standout five is the closing "End of the Line," featuring lead vocals from everyone except Dylan (who's just on backing vocals) and encapsulating the fun rollicking good-time vibe of the rest of the album in a tidy 3:30.

Among the others, Dylan takes lead on two: "Dirty World," which at first seems like a throwaway with smutty innuendo but then turns into such a bizarre collection of smutty innuendo that it becomes hilarious; and "Congratulations," a ballad that would have fit in decently on Oh Mercy a year later, though I'm not sure if Lanois production would have been better or worse than Lynne production. One of them, "Rattled," is a Lynne-sung piece of alright piano-heavy boogie-woogie that I wouldn't mind hearing again once in a while but is probably my least favorite on the album if I had to pick one. One of them, "Last Night," is a Petty-sung (with occasional vocals from Orbison, who's way more charismatic in his parts than Petty) ska number in which the protagonist gets robbed by a girl he's trying to pick up; and finally, "Heading for the Light" is another clear Harrisong, with prominent Lynne vocals to go with Harrison's, about overcoming feelings of religious and spiritual doubt, and it's fine but really feels like it would belong better on a Harrison solo album than here.

I suppose that rock history, and Petty's history in particular, would be little different without the Traveling Wilburys project, but not everything enjoyable needs importance. For whatever weak spots the album may have in terms of individual songs, the album is sequenced in a way to mask them from adversely affecting the overall impression, and it's hard to finish this album without feeling at least some itch to put it on again right away. In a few years time, this kind of irony-free gleeful collaboration between major figures would have been so un-cool as to make it unthinkable, and I'm glad that it happened in the narrow window that would have allowed it to happen.

The album is purposefully frontloaded, with most of the first half packed with singles while the second half mostly has tracks with lesser ambition, but I don't mind this; the first half is unimpeachable, and the second half tracks are enjoyable enough that I don't perceive the album as having quite the tail-off that I sometimes see people accuse it of having. On the first side, "Free Fallin'," "I Wont Back Down," and "Runnin' Down a Dream" are three of the best Petty songs by any reasonable measure, and the idea that the album is somehow diminished by having them in such close proximity to each other strikes me as a strange one. "Free Fallin'" is simply one of the most attractive combinations of shiny production, memorable verse melody and unforgettable chorus that Petty (or anybody) could ever come up with, with lyrical imagery that makes it one of the best songs to listen to when traveling in California, and no matter how often I hear it I still get a small thrill up my spine the first time Petty goes high with the "FREE" in the chorus. "Won't Back Down," featuring both Mike Campbell on slide guitar and George Harrison on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, ranks behind the side's other two giants for me, but it's still memorable and fun and doesn't last a second longer than it should, so I like it a lot. And "Runnin' Down a Dream," well, that features a riff unlike anything I can think of in the rest of rock music, and combined with the song's unstoppable drive and the instantly memorable verses and chorus + the massive ending guitar solo, it's easily one of the best songs he ever did.

The first side is rounded out by a couple of songs that could be forgotten amongst the giants surrounding them, but I think they're both quite good. "Love is a Long Road" has somewhat dated 80s production, but in a charming "This is the sound of the FUTURE" way (especially in the synths), and I really like the chorus. "A Face in the Crowd" was yet another single from the album, if one that fell between the cracks relatively speaking, and it has a melancholy charm (and some very enticing low-key guitar parts) that benefits well from the production. The second side, then, starts with a cover that's so great that it almost feels like cheating ("Feel a Whole Lot Better," a Byrds song that in some ways feels like it was written specifically for Tom Petty), then proceeds into a series of songs that could be classified as "the other tracks on Full Moon Fever" if they weren't each so nice. The first of these, "Yer So Bad" (another single), has amusingly dark lyrics about the singer's sister getting married and divorced and the ensuing fallout, and it's once again effortlessly catchy in a way that blends the best aspects of older Petty with new tricks.

The next three tracks were written by Petty himself (as opposed to Petty in collaboration with Lynne or Campbell), and all three sound like they could have slotted into the first five albums (with different production) pretty easily. In a certain sense there's a bit of Petty-by-numbers in "Depending on You," "The Apartment Song," and "Alright for Now" that could lead one to dismiss them, but Petty still had a charm with these kinds of songs that belonged only to him, and in particular I don't know what would have to happen to make me feel dead enough inside to not feel moved by "Alright for Now." From there the album goes back into Petty-Lynne mode, finishing with "A Mind With a Heart of its Own" (a Bo Diddley-beat number with lots of charm) and "Zombie Zoo" (which Petty came to hate but I think is goofy fun in its potrayal of a goth girl trying too hard to get noticed), and while these certainly don't provide the album with the sort of "stick the landing" finish expected of most great albums, they leave me feeling so giddy and energized that I just can't think ill of them.

It may seem almost too obvious to mention, but this was the 8th studio album of Petty's career (not counting the Traveling Wilburys experience) since he had formed The Heartbreakers, and at this point 13 years had elapsed since his debut album with the band had come out. A more typical artist might have had a more typical arc, in which Damn the Torpedoes had been his indisputable peak, and perhaps many Petty fans would contend for this as the truth after all. Nonetheless, it almost seems more appropriate to me that Petty would have a more unusual path, and this unusual path ends up making me like Petty more on the whole than I might otherwise. As for the album itself, well, if you're reading this page and somehow don't have this, then you need to get on that pronto.

The album certainly starts and ends on high notes, with two songs that are a blast in their own right but also maintain the silly vibe of the first album. The opening "She's My Baby" is just about the dorkiest possible brassy hard-rock groove, but it's just about the perfect way to start the album, with all four members getting a solo vocal turn and the guitars (from Lynne and from former Thin Lizzy member Gary Moore) set to "oh yeah, this rocks, yeah, rock rock" courtesy of Lynne's production. The closing "Wilbury Twist" is a piano-heavy boogie song describing the world's most preposterous dance, and in a way no song from the album better reflects the spirit of the first one; also, you get to hear George Harrison sing the line "fall on your ass," which is funny in and of itself.

On the first side, the most interesting and memorable of the remaining songs are "The Devil's Been Busy," which mostly sounds like a typical George Harrison solo number but with Dylan contributing vocals in the bridge, and "7 Deadly Sins," a doo-wop number with Dylan on lead that's one of the silliest things Dylan did in his post-peak years (I mean that in a nice way, it's a lot of fun). On the second side, "Cool Dry Place" (sung by Petty but the song feels like Dylan through and through) is an acoustic shuffle with the sorts of lyrics Bob would have written back in his 1965 or 1966 period (and they're good, not sounding at all like self-parody), and "New Blue Moon" is an up-tempo song with minimal melody but somehow very effective for it, and Harrison's slide guitar and Dylan's silly vocals make it a lot of fun. As for the other songs, they're mostly fine, just not especially striking; this is definitely not an album that merits mentioning every song by name.

I suppose I'm a little disappointed that this project couldn't have continued in some form (I have a hot take, for instance, that the perfect new 5th Wilbury would have been Roy Wood, but I suppose there was no way Lynne would have wanted to work with him again), but it was probably good for them to finish before the joke wore too thin. I should note that by far the easiest way to find these albums on CD nowadays is together in a single package that also contains bonus tracks (and a DVD about the project), so if you liked Vol.1, there's no good reason not to listen to (and, for the most part, enjoy) Vol.3.

That leaves nine tracks, and as a whole I think these nine tracks easily stand toe-to-toe with the whole of Full Moon Fever. The big hits were "Learning to Fly" (an absolutely fantastic anthemic opener despite only having four chords) and the title track (an amusing tale of trying to make it big and hitting unexpected snags, with some especially great-sounding guitars and an unforgettable chorus), but this is one of the few Petty albums where I feel like the gap between the "album" tracks and the most popular tracks is pretty narrow (figuring out extensive thoughts to share about any of them is a bit of a difficult task, but that's my problem and not the album's). On the first side, "Kings Highway" (filled with a quiet determination underneath its shiny guitars) and "Two Gunslingers" (a heartwarming tale of two people who decide they shouldn't keep fighting if they can't remember why they started, and with guitar and synth parts that are both uplifting and dark) come from just Petty himself, while the optimistic "The Dark of the Sun" comes from Petty and Lynne and has a country-ish tinge to go with the standard sound of this album.

On the second side, "All the Wrong Reasons" sounds like it should have been a Byrds song (and Roger McGuinn actually makes an appearance on backing vocals) and yet still sounds unmistakably like Petty, and every time I hear that main guitar line a feeling of pure bliss runs up and down my spine. "Too Good to be True" (just Petty) crosses dark and menacingly sparse guitar lines with a simple chorus to terrific effect; "You and I Will Meet Again" (just Petty again) has no single standout feature but is somehow memorable and interesting from start to finish, when various instruments seep into the sound to make the song more atmospheric; and the closing "Built to Last" (Petty and Lynne) has a fascinating drum pattern underlaying a melody and chorus that are poppy in a way totally different from anything Petty had done to this point but better for it.

I can see the arguments for liking this less than I do, of course. It's dated in a way that even Full Moon Fever isn't, and the sound is definitely such that Lynne's artistic personality sometimes swallows up Petty's in a way that could make Petty fans and uncomfortable (and presumably made Petty a little uncomfortable, since he went in a totally different direction on his next album). Nonetheless, as somebody without any particular aversion to Jeff Lynne's production style, and also without an especially strong attachment to Petty's artistic personality, I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing, and I enjoy the melding of the two here only somewhat less than I did on Full Moon Fever.

In an ideal world, this album would be Petty's peak ... but it's too long, suffering majorly from 90s CD-itis. Generally, I'm not somebody who automatically knocks an album for going too long (lots of double albums rank among my favorites), but I require long albums to have something about them that merits their length, whether it's a central overriding theme/sound or, going the other way, a collision of disparate ideas that increase the album's internal tension, and in either case, great care has to be taken in regards to sequencing. With this album, the hits are remarkable, perhaps the best collection of hits found on any single Petty album, but they're loaded into the first few tracks, and from there the album just sort of floats along aimlessly until it reaches an anthemic conclusion ("Wake Up Time," an orchestrated ballad with some spoken parts, and which has a power to it that goes beyond the raw musical materials). In discussing this album with friends, the word "shaggy" appeared to describe it, and I think that's right; I'm not even sure which specific songs I would want to remove, or if there's just a bunch of songs that each need to be shortened, but this album definitely needed some trimming to turn it into the monster it could have been.

For all of this, the first 5 tracks of the album are awesome, starting from the opening title track, an stripped-down acoustic ballad with one of the most immediately pleasant and charming tunes Petty over wrote. From there, 3 hits surround a terrific deeper cut, "Time to Move On," a quiet and subtle guitar/drums up-tempo ballad covered in lovely keyboards (sometimes a synth, sometimes a piano). "You Don't Know How it Feels" is basically perfect 90s rock, from the drums to the verses to the iconic bridge (you have no idea how many times I heard people enthusiastically singing "Let's roll another joint!!" in high school, and yet I'm not sick of it at all) to the chorus, and the guitar and keyboard parts are just delightful. "You Wreck Me" (with a Campbell co-credit) is perfect up-tempo guitar-rock from first note to last, and "It's Good to be King" is a majestic slow-burn with a terrific simple piano part and a great guitar break (that would become the launching pad for live soloing that would get excessive and yet awesome in its excess). In total, these tracks last about 20 minutes, and in an ideal world they would have been the first half of a roughly 40-minute album that, courtesy of possibly the best single side of Petty material (in competition with the first sides of Damn the Torpedos and Full Moon Fever), could have been the best Petty ever.

But from there? Well, I really like "Only a Broken Heart" for how openly and blatantly it tries to sound like solo John Lennon; part of me thinks I should hold such a blatant nod against him, but the similarity is so obvious that criticizing the song for that seems like a task for an idiot, and instead I have to praise Tom for coming up with such a delightful song that gets at the essence of Lennon without ripping off any particular song. I really like the pounding hard-rock sexual thirst of "Honey Bee" and the grumbling hard-rock coolness of "Cabin Down Below," both of which I lament for not making the Live Anthology set (I can't imagine how they wouldn't have killed in concert). I really like the up-tempo anthemic pop-rock of "A Higher Place," which could have fit seamlessly on Full Moon Fever with slightly different production, and which has a repeated false resolution that I enjoy a great deal every time I hear it. And, as mentioned earlier, I really like the last track, "Wake Up Time." The rest, though, is songs that I like but probably would have enjoyed in the context of a supplemental EP (the best example here is the dark acoustic menace of "Don't Fade on Me," which I enjoy plenty as a standalone track but that always makes me fade in context), and even if they probably deserve individual namechecks, they function in aggregate as "the songs on Wildflowers that make me wish Wildflowers was over already," and that's not a great thing.

Still, I can see the case for liking this much more than I do (my understanding is that Petty named this as his favorite of his own albums), even if I can also see the case for liking this much less than I do (people who got into Petty through earlier iterations of his work may find a lot to dislike here, as he managed to turn his back both on his earliest style and his Lynne-revival style with this album). As of writing (in 2019), finding this on CD is very difficult, but it is easily available in legal (and sub-legal) digital formats, so if you're somehow only familiar with Petty through Greatest Hits (released prior to this album), you should hear this album if only for the big famous songs near the start. And hey, who knows, maybe something like "Crawling Back to You" will end up meaning something to you beyond what it means to me.

A particular point of interest on this album comes from Petty doing two covers, which he hadn't regularly done on previous albums (part of what made the cover of "Feel a Whole Lot Better" so interesting was its rarity). One of these is a cover of "Change the Locks" by Lucinda Williams, done in a similar arrangement to the original (the contrast between the voices of the two kinda cracks me up, but the grumbly guitars are basically the same), and the other is a cover of "Asshole" by Beck, from his One Foot in the Grave album. Perhaps some might view the inclusion of these songs as evidence that Petty wasn't really taking this project seriously, but I find them a lot of fun, and a version of this album without them would clearly make the album worse.

Among the other songs, my favorites are "Zero From Outer Space" (a speedy lightweight rocker that sounds a good deal like early Heartbreakers stuff), "California" (a warm ballad with the great opening lines "California's been good to me / Hope it don't fall into the sea"), and the blink-if-you-missed it 1:18 acoustic/strings instrumental "Hope on Board," which almost sounds like a prelude to "Walls (No.3)" but is a nice respite in its own right. The two versions of "Angel Dream" (here titled "Angel Dream (No.4)" and "Angel Dream (No.2)") are quite lovely (the "No.2" version is a quiet acoustic ballad while the "No.4" version has some odd production effects laid on top of it) as well, even if I wouldn't quite regard them as among Petty's very best ballads. The one collaboration with Campbell, the mid-tempo anthemic rocker "Climb That Hill," isn't amazing, but the main guitar line that moves it forward is a simple marvel, and it would have fit in well, for better worse, with the second half of Wildflowers.

There are other songs too, and maybe they're not top-notch, but they all sound good in the context of the album, and ultimately that's what matters most. In total, then, this is an album that never once embarrasses itself, and even if it gets a little dull in spots, there are enough high points on here for me to drag the rating up to a low A. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go listen to "Walls (Circus)" again.

The opening "Room at the Top" immediately makes it clear just how dreary things will be, with a slow melancholy dirge (that becomes louder and more pounding but never changes its fundamental mood) that at first seems totally inappropriate as an album opener (in the abstract, it's actually quite apropos for this album) before adopting some of the trappings one would more typically expect of a song in that position. It's good, but it took me some getting used to, and it will never be one of my favorites from the band. From there, not everything entirely works for me, but I like everything at least somewhat, and some of the tracks are pretty remarkable. "Lonesome Sundown" is a slow country-ish song with nice piano and guitar, and the melodies that emerge (more than just a simple chorus) when he sings "It's a lonesome sundown ..." were among the first things to grow on me when listening to this album. "Swingin'" doesn't have much in the way of vocal melody (this seems on purpose), but the instrumental backing is terrific, a great mix of harmonica, guitar, piano, and drums, culminating in a guitar solo that sounds as much like Neil Young as like The Heartbreakers, and it's an anthemic blast that I end up considering the best thing on the album. "Accused of Love" (interestingly, these three tracks all happen in a row) is another highlight, a gentle country-ish ballad with bits of distorted guitar drizzled in for flavor, and it gives a light touch to the album that it badly needs. "Won't Last Long" is a driving pop-rocker that reminds me more of R.E.M. than of Petty (especially in the backing vocals), which isn't a bad thing; "Billy the Kid" is a mid-tempo stomper with an especially memorable chorus; and "This One's For Me" is another one with an R.E.M. tinge, a shimmering pop-rocker with another great chorus. These aren't especially different from other tracks that Petty and co. had done under the supervision of Rubin, but I enjoy them every time I listen to them.

The rest of these songs are all good individually, but collectively they're a slog. They sometimes tend to go much longer than I'd expect as well; for instance, the title track is over 6:30, and as pretty as I might find the verses and chorus, they're built into a structure that spends an awful lot of time in "get yer lighters out" mode (the closing "One More Night" is similarly almost 6 minutes, when as this kind of low-key mellow anthemic ballad it would have worked better around 4 minutes). One after another, these tracks sound decent and melancholy when on, and make little impression as soon as I'm done with them, and there are only so many listens I can give to an album with this kind of effect on me before I start to suspect that it might not be me that's the problem. The one slight novelty out of this remaining batch is "I Don't Wanna Fight," which is written and actually sung by Mike Campbell, and it's a fun rocker in a somewhat throwback vein, but it's rather flimsy by the standards of the material Petty and the band had accumulated to this point in their history.

I suppose I could see where somebody could see the overall features I consider weaknesses as strengths; the album has a transparent emotional weight and emotional coherency, from start to finish, not really found on previous Petty albums. Nonetheless, one man's deep emotional experience is another man's tedium, and as much as I like much of the material on here and don't hate the rest, I can't think of a reason I would want to listen to this album in full again when he has so many other nice ones I can go to instead. Still, if you're a fan of Petty and the band, there's a chance you might be emotionally invested enough in the man so that hearing him in this state might be cathartic, and this album is definitely worth hearing at least a couple of times in full.

If somebody is going to take the general approach of tearing this album down, then the song "Joe" (the album's fourth track) will almost certainly draw most of their ire, and in this case I can't argue. "Joe" is an ugly mid-tempo stomper that barely counts as a song; maybe Tom made a deliberate choice to make a song from the perspective of a music label CEO as non-musical as possible, or maybe he got so hung up on the song's message that he just didn't bother to put much effort into the music, but whatever may be, this song marks the first time that I can find nothing appealing in a given Petty song (even "All or Nothin'" and "Makin Some Noise" from Into the Great Wide Open had some recommendable traits).

And yet, that's only one song, and throwing away the entire album because of one song seems silly to me. Aside from "Joe," only three songs strike me as clearly connecting to the album's supposed concept, and they deserve better than a snarky dimissal of "AcTuAlLy ToM pEtTy WaS oN wArNeR bRoS wHiCh WaS oNe Of ThE bIgGeSt LaBeLs." The title track was the album's most notable single (and even made a prominent appearance in the original airing of a Simpsons episode where Homer went to a Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp), and while the lyrics do veer towards preachiness a bit more than is typical for a Petty single, the song is crisp and memorable in all of the ways one would expect from Petty, and it's at least a minor classic. "Money Becomes King" may last a little long and may once again be a little too preachy, but I really like the faux-psychedelic strings which give a hazy and murky feel to the song's imagery, and they mark one of several interesting twists that this album ultimately provides. The concept then mostly disappears until the last track (only reappearing in the interim with "Joe"), "Can't Stop the Sun," a gripping guitar-heavy anthem about how artists with integrity will continue to emerge no matter what forces stand in their way, with an inevitability like that of the sun shining or the world turning. The shifts between quiet and contemplative in the verses to loud and rousing in the chorus are jarring in a good way, and the final instrumental passages are an absolute thunderstorm that send the album out on a very high note.

The rest of the album, as mentioned before, has little or nothing to do with the themes established in the start and end of the album, and over and over I find myself enjoying these songs just as much as I enjoy typical tracks from Petty's better-regarded albums. My absolute favorite is "You and Me," a cheerful upbeat piano-heavy song with a degree of whimsy not often found in Petty's work, and while I could imagine an old-time fan angrily holding on to their copy of Damn the Torpedoes and looking down on this song, I would hope that would be the exception and not the rule among Petty fans. Just a step behind it for me is "The Man Who Loves Women," initially featuring what I have to assume is a ukulele before turning into what would have been one hell of a Wings song, with great playful organ and piano parts and a terrific backing vocals cameo from Lindsey Buckingham. If these are too lightweight, then I could easily recommend "Dreamville," a beautiful lush ballad that almost sounds like Petty attempting a cross between Abbey Road-era Beatles and The Moody Blues, and if that once again sounds too much like something outside of the music you think Petty is "supposed" to make then you and I aren't really on the same wavelength. Even the less interesting tracks are still interesting; "When a Kid Goes Bad" probably doesn't have enough going on to justify its 5-minute run-time, and yet I find the horn arrangements interesting enough around the minimalist guitar rock at the core of the song that I never find myself minding it when on.

Moving through the rest of the tracks: "Like a Diamond" sounds like a primo lost John Lennon piano ballad from around the Walls and Bridges era, which is a major compliment from me; "Lost Children" is a good mix of softer balladry and throwback 70s riffy hard-rock but with less grumbly guitars; "Blue Sunday" is go-nowhere acoustic balladry that nonetheless creates a mystical atmosphere that I rather appreciate; and "Have Love Will Travel" sounds exactly like a prototypical mid-tempo Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers anthem, without sounding like a rewrite of anything they'd done before, which means I like it. Add it all up, and this is an album I would like a clear step beyond many of his most famous albums, were it not for this album containing the worst song he'd yet released (and maybe ever released), and ultimately a rating of A just feels right to me. If you can avoid going in with a pre-conceived notion of how much devotion Petty gives to this concept (much less than what you'd think), then I think it's reasonable to expect that you'll lean much more towards my impression of the album than towards, say, the AllMusic Guide impression (AMG gave this 1.5 stars out of 5, which seems more and more inexplicable the more I look at it).

Ostensibly, the album is built around a theme implied by its title; this album was billed as a collection of songs for playing on road trips. Personally, I find it a little silly to try and evaluate the songs here by that standard, but I do somewhat get what they tried to imply here; the songs on this album generally have a clear motor to them, whether fast or slow, and there's a crispness to these songs that, for instance, Echo often lacked. The one thing that could throw somebody off a bit is that, for songs built around good ole fashioned rock 'n roll, they're also often melancholy when you dig into the lyrics, and I could get the argument if somebody wanted to call this a "confused" album because of that. Personally, though, I find this juxtaposition between the lyrics and the music very interesting and to the album's benefit; I find it intriguing that, in trying to express his feelings about the world changing in ways he couldn't and didn't want to understand, he used as his artistic vehicle a collection of styles that he knew with initimate familiarity.

Choosing highlights is deeply difficult on an album as even as this one, but ultimately two songs stood out for me most. The first is "Square One" (which I suppose some people look down upon because it first appeared in the soundtrack to the film Elizabethtown), one of his best melancholy acoustic ballads, and the second is "Night Driver," an acoustic ballad with moody electric piano (and touches of grumbly electric guitars for garnish) that I always think belongs on a Justin Hayward solo album more than it necessarily belongs on a Petty album. Beyond those, though, the album abounds with bursts of genial simplicity; maybe these songs aren't much more than high second tier Petty songs, but as I've said before, the Petty second tier is remarkable, and all of these songs are on the upper end of it. Sometimes I find myself most partial to the opening "Saving Grace," which may be a throwaway ZZ Top song at its core but has so many details I could only see Petty and Lynne coming up with (such as specific ways in which the keyboards get deployed) and such great stinging guitar work that it far surpasses its starting point. Sometimes it's "Down South," which weirdly feels like Petty simultaneously imitating CCR and Dylan while still retaining his own personality, and ends up somehow creating something that feels genuinely new and necessary. Sometimes it's the low-key "This Old Town," which starts off as a very simple country song about a quiet town and ends up taking on a profound beauty beyond what one would have guessed. And sometimes it's "Ankle Deep," a song (presumably) about a single father raising his daughter somewhere in the Midwest and that I'm weirdly shocked that Petty hadn't managed to write already (if this had somehow been able to replace one of the relative duds on Into the Great Wide Open then that album would have been a monster).

There are several other songs on here that I didn't mention (ok, one more: the closing "The Golden Rose" is a beautiful anthem, and that arpeggiated guitar line under the "Goodbye golden rose" chorus, as clearly nicked from Abbey Road-era Beatles it may be, is amazing), but any of them are a certainty to make me smile when I listen to them, and that I can't necessarily think of interesting things to say about them doesn't mean I don't think highly of them (hell I even like "Jack" a lot, and that's the closest thing the album has to a throwaway). Petty had actually considered making this his swan-song, and while he didn't ultimately follow through on this, it would have been a terrific way to go out (the next studio album he made unfortunately wrecked this). This album showed that Petty had, at least temporarily, found a perfect way to age gracefully, and I would absolutely rate it on par with, say, Love and Theft.

Obviously I have no intentions of going through every track, but I can mention some general aspects of what's included. In terms of material from Petty's studio albums (with the band and solo), it's inevitable that this set has most of his biggest hits (about 75% of Greatest Hits is somewhere on here), but that also leaves a lot of room for deeper cuts; it's telling, for instance, that "Nightwatchman" (a performance from 1981) starts off the set, rather than one of the better-known tracks that immediately follows ("Even the Losers" or "Here Comes My Girl"). Many of the tracks from his studio albums are done here in a manner pretty close to the originals, just with more energy and drive, but the band isn't afraid to stretch itself either, such as when "It's Good to be King" gets stretched out to over 12 minutes (at least 9 of which are interesting). The set does weight itself more heavily towards the earliest and/or most famous albums (though he also includes 4 tracks from The Last DJ, maybe to try and prove a point), but every studio album gets at least one entry, and while it's certainly possible to quibble with why this song made it or that song didn't, the holes aren't egregious enough to worsen the set.

Where the set becomes most interesting for me is when it deviates from performances of songs that had previously made it to studio albums. This set has a truck-load of covers, from "I'm in Love" (Bobby Womack) to "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (Willie Dixon) to "Diddy Wah Diddy" (Willie Dixon and Bo Diddley) to "Friend of the Devil" (The Grateful Dead) to the theme to the James Bond movie Goldfinger to "Any Way You Want It" (The Dave Clark 5) to "Ballad of Easy Rider" (The Byrds), with many more that I haven't mentioned. Not every individual cover in this set is amazing, but in aggregate they present the band as a very flexible ensemble, one that would have been tons of fun to see in person if only for the potential of what surprises they'd throw in.

For all of the great performances of classics and covers, though, the absolute highlight of the set, for me, comes near the end of the first disc, with a combined 13-minute performance of two rarities that Petty only performed on the 1993 tour. The first of these two songs is "Drivin' Down to Georgia," propelled by, well, driving riffage and monster work from the rhythm section, with gentler piano-heavy passages integrated in for good measure; I'm not sure this song would have worked in studio (too much of its charm comes from how loose it is), but in this form it's a triumph. Just as the main song winds down, a coda emerges, called "I'm Lost Without You," which a wrong-headed cynic might dismiss as rambling and directionless, but which I hear as an expression of emotional nakedness and pain without parallel in the Petty discography. The recurring phrase, "One of these days I'm gonna get my shit together, stop screwing up," along with its variations, is delivered in a way that should resonate with anybody struggling to improve themselves in some way, with instrumental backing that parks itself in a quiet and depressing mode that feels like it wants to build into a thunderstorm but can't because it's too tired to get off the couch, only to burst into a thunderstorm for about 20 seconds near the end. It's absolutely stunning, and if somebody were to listen to it and respond with "blah blah blah there's no melody blah blah blah" I simply would not understand it.

Every Tom Petty fan should own this set, and quite frankly anybody who somehow dislikes Tom Petty but likes rock music in general should own this set (this is a perfectly reasonable choice for "the one Tom Petty album to own if you're only going to own one"). Kudos to Petty for realizing that having a reputation as a great live performer but only having Pack Up the Plantation: Live! as an official live release was a bad look for him, and kudos to everyone involved in putting this together for all of the time and effort they put into it.

The good news is that, among the various blues exercises, there are some songs that feel like Petty (and in one case, Petty with Campbell) let his muse guide him where it would without worrying about fitting into the genre he had already decided he would fit into with this album. In particular, the 7-minute slow-burn jazzy ballad "First Flash of Freedom" is a minor masterpiece (at least once it dispenses with the noisy bluesy guitar licks at the beginning), with guitars and keyboards that are sometimes so low-key that they seem like they're not there, and sometimes are rousing and beautiful, all in support of simple but lovely vocal melody with an understated chorus (and kudos to the song for providing another exception to my rule of "most songs with the word 'Freedom' in the title suck"). The other two clear highlights are "The Trip to Pirate's Cove," another jazzy and moody (in a way that vaguely evokes Dire Straits but only in broad strokes) number with a haunting vocal delivery and some inspired minimalist guitar work, and "Don't Pull Me Over," an amusing bit of reggae-influenced jazzy-rock that consists of Tom pleading with a policeman not to pull him over because "I got mouths to feed" and "should be legalized" (combining these lyrics with this style was a hilariously cheeky idea). These are highlights in a "deep cut" sort of way, but they stick out like a sore thumb on an album full of blues cliches, and they end up sounding much better for it.

Alas, there's not much else for me to say about this album. Maybe Petty should have made this a dark jazz pop album instead! I can easily envision a scenario where a fan of Petty could talk themselves into this album, but it seems to me that the most likely outcome is listening to this three or four times and then getting completely tired of it aside from the tracks that clearly do something different. In any case, kudos to Tom for trying something new, but good intentions simply don't always pan out.

It helps the album for me that the songs I consider best are spread out from start to finish. The opening "American Dream Plan B" has a riff that reminds me of "Circus Envy" by R.E.M. (which in turn reminded me of some early Kinks songs), and it opens like a flower from this tight punkish energy into a flourish of guitar and keyboards in the chorus that makes for a terrific contrast in a terrific opener. A few tracks later comes "All You Can Carry" (my choice for the album's best), featuring a taut rolling guitar riff in the verses and a chorus that is sparse in terms of the actual vocal part but has a huge sound built around it, and the lead guitar parts are a showcase of Campbell at his very best. As for the third, the closing "Shadow People" is an interesting of taking a 4-5 minute song and seemingly supergluing elements of other potential songs to it throughout to make it almost 7 minutes (for instance there's a quiet guitar part that starts in the third minute that I like a lot but feels like it could have started a totally different song), and it makes for a listening experience that's appropriately anthemic but also mournful and unsettling, and even if it wasn't intended as a career closer it works very well as one.

Among the other eight tracks, a couple of them are more on the quiet side (the jazzy "Full Grown Boy" and "Sins of My Youth," the latter of which has a dreamy vibe not usually found among Petty songs), but mostly the material sounds like it's vaguely in the same vein as the material found on the band's earliest albums, done in a way that's pleasantly not embarrassing given how much time had elapsed between then and now. "Fault Lines," "Forgotten Man," and "U Get Me High," in particular, are gritty rockers that sound like they could have come straight off of the debut or You're Gonna Get It, while "Red River" starts off sounding a bit like sludgy rock made by older people but then becomes more nimble before sliding into an unforgettable chorus in the vein of Petty's brand of unforgettable choruses. And finally "Power Drunk" and "Burnt Out Town" are each excursions into blues-rock not unlike the typical exercises from Mojo, but they sound way more fun when they're just two tracks (and far apart in the album) and not representative of the whole, and in context they're kind of a blast.