Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- Echo
6/10
Yes...I only have one Tom Petty album on compact disc...and it is 1999's relatively obscure Echo. Before I lose all credibility, I do have most of Petty's well known solo and Heartbreakers albums on vinyl, both inherited/stolen from my parents or bought for nothing at thrift stores. However, this review series, which I started in 2011, is almost exclusively focused on the albums I've accumulated on CD...I guess I'll get to the other stuff later.
Anyway, I was sitting at the old home PC back in April of 1999, getting ready for my Friday night shift at the Winn Dixie, looking forward to the release of Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. Boy, was I pumped for that movie, but I was starting to grow saddened by the fact that it looked like most of my Friday nights for the upcoming summer before my senior year of high school would be spent behind the cash register of a grocery store. I saw that Tom Petty was releasing his new single, and me being out of time and all, I got excited and downloaded it. It somehow finished in just a couple hours, so I got to listen to it before I left for work. The song, "Room at the Top," was by far the most depressing Tom Petty song I'd ever heard, a melancholy, introspective musing on loneliness that I could most definitely identify with at that moment. As I helped straighten the Episode I-themed Chip Display in front of the store that night around midnight, I found myself singing the chorus under my breath (I'd have the similarly Internet-released "Duel of the Fates" stuck in my head a few weeks later).
Turns out the song and the album were inspired by Tom Petty's divorce and subsequent drug-fueled downward spiral before he got sober and remarried. "Please love me/I'm not so bad/and I love you so," sung very emotionally in the song's brittle bridge was most likely directed toward Petty's children, now across the country with their mother. It's the mix of this depressive melancholy with Petty's inward determination that makes the song so powerful. His "room at the top of the world" is probably a state of inebriation, but when he says he "ain't coming down," there's a strange warmth to his singing that feels at once comforting and stubbornly ironclad. I've heard the vast majority of songs Tom Petty has recorded, and I think "Room at the Top" is one of the best, and certainly most powerful. Petty likely agreed with the latter, as after he completed Echo's live tour, he decided to never revisit the song again.
The two moods of "Room at the Top" drive most of the album. Along with his most frequent musical companion, the Heartbreakers, Petty crafts about an equal amount of melancholy and more upbeat tracks, though even those upbeat ones are tinged with subtle sadness. Even the most positive-leaning of tracks, "Won't Last Long," admits that even if it "won't last long," Petty is still "down." The music follows in the back-to-basics, straightforward, but well-performed classic rock sound the band were known for. Expect driving 3/4 and 4/4 rhythms, a mix of electric and acoustic guitar, and nice piano, organ, and harmonica touches. Every now and then there are some cool guitar effects and gnarly solos too. Petty's voice sounds great and full of emotion (obviously, giving the situation). The man from Gainesville continues the 1999 trend of 80's rockers getting more introspective, much like Echo and the Bunnymen did with that year's What Are You Going to Do With Your Life.
That Echo and the Bunnymen album is nine tracks, though. Echo is 14, at least four too long. I wish Petty had culled this tracklist down to ten, especially considering four tracks top the five-minute mark, and the whole album comes in at 62-minutes. That's definitely the major weakness here. Currently, Spotify is Echo-free, and the album is little talked about. A shorter work of this nature may have landed on the "classic Petty" list. Instead, it's an album I remember fondly for one song, with thirteen more that I rarely revisit. Looks like I'm sticking to vinyl in this case.
1999 Warner Bros.
1. Room at the Top 5:00
2. Counting on You 4:05
3. Free Girl Now 3:30
4. Lonesome Sundown 4:32
5. Swingin' 5:30
6. Accused of Love 2:45
7. Echo 6:36
8. Won't Last Long 4:22
9. Billy the Kid 4:08
10. I Don't Wanna Fight Mike Campbell 2:47
11. This One's for Me 2:42
12. No More 3:15
13. About to Give Out 3:12
14. Rhino Skin 3:57
15. One More Day, One More Night 5:37
The two moods of "Room at the Top" drive most of the album. Along with his most frequent musical companion, the Heartbreakers, Petty crafts about an equal amount of melancholy and more upbeat tracks, though even those upbeat ones are tinged with subtle sadness. Even the most positive-leaning of tracks, "Won't Last Long," admits that even if it "won't last long," Petty is still "down." The music follows in the back-to-basics, straightforward, but well-performed classic rock sound the band were known for. Expect driving 3/4 and 4/4 rhythms, a mix of electric and acoustic guitar, and nice piano, organ, and harmonica touches. Every now and then there are some cool guitar effects and gnarly solos too. Petty's voice sounds great and full of emotion (obviously, giving the situation). The man from Gainesville continues the 1999 trend of 80's rockers getting more introspective, much like Echo and the Bunnymen did with that year's What Are You Going to Do With Your Life.
That Echo and the Bunnymen album is nine tracks, though. Echo is 14, at least four too long. I wish Petty had culled this tracklist down to ten, especially considering four tracks top the five-minute mark, and the whole album comes in at 62-minutes. That's definitely the major weakness here. Currently, Spotify is Echo-free, and the album is little talked about. A shorter work of this nature may have landed on the "classic Petty" list. Instead, it's an album I remember fondly for one song, with thirteen more that I rarely revisit. Looks like I'm sticking to vinyl in this case.
1999 Warner Bros.
1. Room at the Top 5:00
2. Counting on You 4:05
3. Free Girl Now 3:30
4. Lonesome Sundown 4:32
5. Swingin' 5:30
6. Accused of Love 2:45
7. Echo 6:36
8. Won't Last Long 4:22
9. Billy the Kid 4:08
10. I Don't Wanna Fight Mike Campbell 2:47
11. This One's for Me 2:42
12. No More 3:15
13. About to Give Out 3:12
14. Rhino Skin 3:57
15. One More Day, One More Night 5:37
Comments