Rating: NNN
Many of the songs on Hypnotic Eye – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 13th album – would be right at home on the band’s Greatest Hits or 1979’s Damn The Torpedoes. None of them are as immediately catchy or memorable, and perhaps that’s to be expected. But Petty and Co. are at ease and doing what they please.
The bandleader himself calls this a “straight hard-rockin’ record,” but there’s actually a fair amount of variety, from the crunchy onslaught of opener American Dream Plan B to the speedy jazz-tinged surf rock of Fault Lines, the mellower piano blues of Full Grown Boy and soft bossa nova of Sins Of My Youth.
Petty is charismatic on Red River, which also has the most winning chorus. Listen to the band as it drops out, then comes back in after a wailing guitar solo on Power Drunk – you can actually hear Petty count everyone back in. Then there’s the long closer, Shadow People (sounding more than a little like Refugee), ending with an eccentric, quiet coda.
Top track: Red River
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play the Air Canada Centre August 26.
