{"id":41116,"date":"2008-09-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/echo\/"},"modified":"2008-09-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-23T00:00:00","slug":"echo","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/echo\/","title":{"rendered":"Echo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year was 1999, and Tom Petty was hurting.\u00a0 His twenty-year marriage had broken up, his friend Carl Wilson had died too young, and his previous album (the She\u2019s The One<\/i> soundtrack) had been a commercial disappointment.<\/p>\n

That trio of blows and creeping middle age combined to give Petty a case of the blues that could only be worked out by a healthy dose of music-making.\u00a0 Echo<\/i>, the resulting album, holds a unique place in the TP and the HB\u2019s pantheon — bluesy and contemplative in places, fiery and combative in others, it\u2019s among his most personal and least formulaic albums.\u00a0 Not necessarily one of his best, mind you — nothing he\u2019s done since Damn The Torpedoes<\/i> has been without substantial helpings of filler — but surely one of his more interesting latter-day outings.<\/p>\n

Part of that interest stems from the wider range of musical approaches co-producers Petty, Heartbreakers guitarist Mike<\/st1:personname> Campbell and Rick Rubin employ here.\u00a0 \u201cRoom At The Top\u201d kicks things off in anything-but-typical style, an edgy ballad of loss that Petty wrote in Wilson\u2019s memory which starts out sparse and centered on Benmont Tench\u2019s piano before Campbell\u2019s guitar thunders in at the second verse.\u00a0 \u201cCounting On You\u201d feels like a Wildflowers<\/i> outtake, rather dusty and unformed, but \u201cFree Girl Now\u201d pulls you back in quickly with a driving riff and snarly lyric right out of the classic Petty arsenal.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Batting cleanup, \u201cLonesome Sundown\u201d puts Tench\u2019s piano out front again for one of the most country-flavored tunes of the band\u2019s career, a low-key mid-tempo tune of surprising melodic charm.\u00a0 And \u201cSwingin\u2019\u201d feels like classic Tom slowed down a step, a rather Dylanesque guitar, piano and harmonica shuffle that builds to a simple, muscular chorus riff.<\/p>\n

From that rangy, reasonably intriguing opening sequence, the album — as so many of Petty\u2019s post-1980 discs do — unfortunately falters.\u00a0 Yes, Tom is sweet on \u201cAccused Of Love\u201d and plaintive on \u201cEcho\u201d and cocky on \u201cWon\u2019t Last Long,\u201d but none of it carries the impact of his best work.\u00a0 By the time you get to the startling novelty of Mike<\/st1:personname> Campbell singing lead on his stomping \u201cI Don\u2019t Want To Fight,\u201d the spell the opening five threatened to cast has worn off and we\u2019re back in filler-land, with five songs to go.<\/p>\n

The remaining play-by-play, as you\u2019ve probably guessed, is not worth our time here.\u00a0 Suffice it to say, after a promising opening Echo<\/i> peters out like many of Petty\u2019s later albums, frittering away its early promise on a series of songs that are workmanlike but nothing more.\u00a0 There\u2019s a fair amount of craft but precious little spark, as the songs sound more and more like a TP cover band than the fiery, often-brilliant bunch we all remember.\u00a0 More than anything, Petty himself sounds tired, like his heart wasn\u2019t really in this album.\u00a0 He brings energy to the stronger tunes up front, but seems to recognize the remainders for what they are, and be content to just try to get through them.<\/p>\n

Echo<\/i> could have been a catharsis of sorts, but after a decent start it goes out with a whimper rather than a bang.\u00a0 Let\u2019s hope that\u2019s never true of the band itself, but it\u2019s going to take a better album than either Echo<\/i> or 2002\u2019s The Last DJ<\/i> to put a proper cap on the storied career of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6253],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-41116","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41116"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}