Come hell or high water, I’m gonna finish this…….
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Echo – 1999 (Buy It)
No. The opening track, “Room at the Top” is NOT the Adam Ant hit. Wouldn’t that be cool, though? Mebbe not. As opening tracks go, it’s big, it’s heart wrenching and it’s wondrous.
There is a little bit of soul that has found it’s way into the repertoire here. TP is still writing and recording songs for rockers who have been hitting the hash pipe all day. I have visions of the recording studio; passing a bong around while the bearded one, Rubin, sits, shoeless on a big, soft, leather couch, hippy chicks on either side, curling into his arm pits, his head just nodding in time, the engineer fiddling with knobs, Petty just doing his thing.
The album plays like the opening of a concert: Three introductory tracks, one epic, one mellow, the other big and bombastic.
Then it settles into…really good background music. It’s so mellow and unsurprising that you forget you have the headphones on.
Listenable but foregettable songs like “Stand Accused of Love” permeate this album. The melancholia that floats over every song isn’t heart-wrenching as much as it is….there.
“I Don’t Wanna Fight” is written and SUNG by Mike Campbell! After 20+ Years and he sounds like…..Tom Petty.
It picks up a little toward the end particularly after the Campbell debacle. As if to apologize, No More is followed by a retro rocker About to Give Out. A song that would have fit on any TP album in any era and a real barnburner.
Grade B+
A Side: Room at the Top, Free Girl Now, About to Give Out
BlindSide: Echo, Billy The Kid, No More, Rhino Skin, One More Night and One More Day
DownSide: Any of the forgettable filler tracks on this cd. And I Don’t Wanna Fight.
