Echo
Artist: Tom Petty
Label: Warner Brothers Records 1999
Length: 62:06 minutes/ 15 tracks
When you have a recipe that works, you don't change it much. For
more than twenty years Tom Petty has been making rock and roll music with
the same basic ingredients: a variety of simple, basic tunes without
too elaborate arrangements, and straightforward lyrics without pretensions
to grand poetry. But continuity of style does not imply utter sameness;
Petty has not been making the same album over and over again. Nor is Petty's
latest, Echo, a rehash of his previous album, Wildflowers.
The music on Echo runs the gamut. Faster-paced tunes like
"Free Girl Now" mix with medium tempo tunes like the title cut, and
slightly slower tunes like "No More." Petty has a knack for fitting subdued
songs like "This One's For Me" right next to raucous rock tunes like "I
Don't Wanna Fight" on the same album without jarring the listener with
the contrast.
Petty varies his arrangements, too. The album's first song, "Room
on Top of the World," begins with a simple acoustic accompaniment and swells
into a full-blown rock tune without changing tempo. "No More" features
Petty's voice, an acoustic guitar, and a little piano. "About to Give Out,"
in contrast, rocks out throughout, with an energy that suggests that the
players were having a lot of fun playing the tune.
Most of the players behind Petty are familiar. Although the album
is not billed as the work of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, most of the
Heartbreakers are present. The album's instrumental mix, therefore, will
be familiar to fans. On acoustic and electric guitars, Petty and Mike Campbell
go easy on the effects pedals, and add just a pinch of jangle here and
a dash of accompanying harmonica there. Benmont Tench flavors the songs
with lots of acoustic piano and electric organ with some synthesized sounds
for spice. All this is poured over Howie Epstein's solid bass work.
Petty's vocal work is much the same as it always is. For twenty years, Petty's characteristic twang and quaver has fit his melodies. He emotes as well as ever, ranging from the plaintive "No More" to the weary resignation of the title cut, to the urgency of "One More Night, One More Day." Always aware of his vocal range and his limitations, Petty produces music that is recognizably his, while still encouraging the listener to sing along.
As a lyricist, Petty remains imaginative without being consciously
literary. While keeping a song's rhyme scheme, Petty's songs present everyday
life in everyday language. The themes are common and universal: romantic
relationships and their ups and downs, honesty, and hope. On Echo
there is a noticeable tilt toward the downside of romantic relationships
in songs like the title cut and "Billy the Kid," but the hope remains,
as in songs like "Won't Last Long." The album's last song, "One More Night,
One More Day," is both a testimony of life's struggles and an expression
of hope that hanging on for one more night and one more day will see life
getting better.
Petty has demonstrated a satirical side in his lyrics before. In
"You Don't Know How It Feels," the somewhat controversial song from his
previous album, many listeners confused the point of view of the character
singing the song with Petty's own point of view. Petty had to explain what
sort of character was singing to defend himself from charges of advocating
marijuana use. The song "I Don't Wanna Fight" on the present album mixes
the complaints of a similar ne'er-do-well male who sees himself as a victim
in the verses with lame insistences in the chorus: "I don't wanna fight....I'm
a lover..." I take this song to be similar in intent to "You Don't Know
How It Feels." The casual listener may miss the satire and misunderstand
Petty's intent, but at least "I Don't Wanna Fight" doesn't contain any
lyrics that might irk parents.
At the opposite end of the relationship spectrum is "Accused of
Love" with a chorus that ends "But I know that I believe that you and me
forever will stand accused of love." As Petty's love songs go, this is
not one of his better efforts. The chorus's court of law metaphor is not
taken up in the verses until the last one, leaving the listener wondering
at first why Petty chose that particular metaphor to describe a relationship.
One noticeable difference between the songs on Echo and his
previous work is Petty's play with multiple word meanings. In "Swingin'"
Petty takes the common baseball phrase "went down swinging," and gives
it a twist by adding the name of famous swing musicians: "And she
went down swingin' like Tommy Dorsey." At the end of the song, Petty adds
boxing to the mix by throwing in the name of Sonny Liston, a famous boxer
from the 60's who lost his heavyweight title to Muhammad Ali. Petty makes
other lyrical references to persons and events, as in the story of the
death of Billy the Kid, that are familiar to a thirty-something reviewer,
but not necessarily familiar to younger listeners, which suggests that
Petty isn't about to change his recipe to cater to a younger audience.
One of my favorite tracks on the album is "Rhino Skin." It extends the familiar metaphor of "being thick-skinned" in interesting ways as it ponders the difficulties of life and romance and how to survive them. In addition to skin as thick as a rhino's, Petty sings,
Echo is not Petty's strongest album. Although it lacks the
beginning-to-end strength of Full Moon Fever or The Great Wide
Open, it does contain a fair amount of the ingredients that has feed
Petty's successful career. This is not musical haute cuisine. It's good
eating, but plain, and contains the government recommended daily allowance
of good old fashioned rock and roll, plus a little more.
Chris Parks (6/25/99)
