{"id":42171,"date":"2010-11-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/mojo-2\/"},"modified":"2010-11-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T00:00:00","slug":"mojo-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/mojo-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mojo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA new album from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers\u201d\u2014these words have been met with anticipation from this reviewer for more than 30 years now. And yet, I didn\u2019t necessarily expect to review this one when I picked it up, inasmuch as my colleague Mark Millan had already beaten me to the punch with his rave review<\/a>. As a result, I set about listening to Mojo<\/i> with nothing in mind other than simply enjoying it\u2014and promptly found myself being taken somewhere completely unexpected by the music. Bear with me a moment while I explain\u2026<\/p>\n

One of the things that I personally have always found puzzling about other writers\u2019 descriptions of progressive rock music is when they talk about it being blues-based. This is probably a result of my blues tastes running to the earthier, grittier end of the blues spectrum, stuff like B.B. King and Buddy Guy, or the hard blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan or Gary Moore\u2014and my taste in prog tending toward the airier, more melodic end of that particular genre, as represented by bands like Yes or Spock\u2019s Beard, or at times Genesis or Big Big Train. I\u2019ve just never really comprehended the oft-cited connection between the blues and prog.<\/p>\n

One of the last places I would have expected to isolate and identify that connection is on a Tom Petty album\u2026 but here we are. Petty has spent 35 years now in a pretty consistent groove; he plays Byrds-influenced classic rock, melody-rich guitars and organs populating four-minute odes to women and road trips. Yes, he\u2019s occasionally adapted his music to the times, adopting a bit of punk attitude in the late 70s and using more synthesizers than Hammond organ in the mid-80s, but in every other respect his output has been remarkably consistent\u2014until now. <\/p>\n

Mojo<\/i> is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers\u2014Mike Campbell (lead guitar), Benmont Tench (keys), Ron Blair (bass), Steve Ferrone (drums) and Scott Thurston (guitar & harmonica)\u2014playing the blues. So they have declared, and the description is accurate as far as it goes, but there\u2019s so much more here.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The rather declarative opening statement \u201cJefferson Jericho Blues,\u201d with its howling harmonica and stomping swamp-boogie beat, sets the stage for the rest of the album expertly. That said, \u201cJefferson\u201d in no way prepared me for the dreamy, proggy instrumental opening of sophomore track \u201dFirst Flash Of Freedom,\u201d a 1:15 sequence that sounds like an outtake from The Yes Album<\/i>. \u201cFirst Flash\u201d\u2014which extends a languorous seven minutes\u2014is unlike anything the band has ever recorded before.\u00a0 It\u2019s distinctly bluesy in its use of Hammond organ and weepy guitar solos, but also distinctly proggy in its embrace of the sort of expansive, lyrical quality to the music that I associate with Yes. This song was a revelation to me; forty years on in my personal musical appreciation society, I finally \u201cgot\u201d a connection I\u2019d been reading about for almost that long.<\/p>\n

The connection pops up again in the opening chords of \u201cThe Trip to Pirate\u2019s Cove,\u201d a dreamy travelogue of a couple of scruffy rogues whose nimble guitar ruminations have a distinctly David Gilmour feel to them, while inhabiting what is definitely a blues tune. In between comes one of the album\u2019s highlights, the steady, thrumming \u201cRunning Man\u2019s Bible,\u201d featuring one of Petty\u2019s wisest mid-life lyrics and some of the inimitable Tench\u2019s finest organ work ever.<\/p>\n

From that strong opening, recent Petty efforts have trained us to expect a drop-off in quality, but on Mojo<\/i> it never comes. \u201cCandy\u201d is a shuffle rich with earthy charm\u2026 \u201cNo Reason To Cry\u201d is a sweetly soaring country-blues… and then you get to \u201cI Should Have Known It\u201d and are reminded\u2014forcefully\u2014that Led Zeppelin was first and foremost an electrified blues band.\u00a0 With a tactical warhead of a guitar riff that would have been right at home on Led Zeppelin II<\/i>, this tune finds Campbell unleashed like never before, even giving his initial solo the sort of controlled aggression and distortion-fed majesty you associate with early \u201970s Jimmy Page, before letting loose with an absolutely blistering outro solo.\u00a0 Wowza.<\/p>\n

The rest comes in its own time, never rushed, ever confident. The boys delve into acoustic back-porch blues with \u201cU.S. 41,\u201d offer another Zeppelin-esque slow-burner with \u201cTakin\u2019 My Time,\u201d channel Booker T. & the MG\u2019s on the Stax-ified chugger \u201cLet Yourself Go,\u201d tip their cap to Bob Marley on the reggae-blues \u201cDon\u2019t Pull Me Over,\u201d hark back their 1976 self-titled debut with the sparse, slinky \u201cLover\u2019s Touch,\u201d couch messages in backdrops sharp and gentle on \u201cHigh In The Morning\u201d and \u201cSomething Good Coming,\u201d and deliver a big finish with the slow-and-steady wailer of a closer \u201cGood Enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Heartbreakers were already deservedly regarded as one of the great backing bands in rock history, and they\u2019ve obviously all been students of the blues throughout their careers.\u00a0 That gives them a great feel for this music coming in; add to that some of the finer compositions of Petty\u2019s somewhat uneven latter-day repertoire and you have a sublimely successful experiment. Mojo<\/i> is full of joys large and small, both dependably entertaining and at times much more, and beyond a doubt the best album Petty has issued in more than 20 years.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6253],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42171","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42171","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=42171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53521,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42171\/revisions\/53521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42171"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42171"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}