Tom Petty: Hypnotic Eye

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Hypnotic Eye
(Reprise)
Rating: 4 stars

Tom Petty has touted his new album Hypnotic Eye as a return to the spirit of his first two albums with the Heartbreakers in the late ’70s, back when the band’s full-throttle embrace of rock and roll’s bleeding heart and rebellious soul was desperately needed within a rock scene struggling to find its footing amidst the two-pronged assault of punk and disco. In truth, Petty and his band might not be as quick as they were in the old days, when songs like “American Girl” and “I Need To Know” blistered past us like cars on the 441. The trade-off is that they now rock harder than ever, with a focused fierceness that should leave current rockers dust-covered and envious.

Petty and company stumbled a bit on their last release, 2010’s Mojo, when the quest for blues authenticity robbed the band of their identity. In just a few bars of opening track “American Dream Plan B,” order is restored. Lead guitarist Mike Campbell emerges from some Angus Young-style riffage into a thrilling acoustic breakdown until he tears off one of his trademark solos where he seems to pull clusters of notes out of the air, all while Petty’s vocal drips with defiance.

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In many ways, this album belongs to Campbell as much as it does to Petty. His pyrotechnics figure on just about every track, proving he can simply rip within the rowdy Bo-Diddley rhythms of “Forgotten Man,” but elsewhere showing young gunslingers the art of playing to the lyric by capturing the disgust of “Power Drunk” and the angst of “Shadow People” in equal measure.

The Heartbreaker rhythm section of Ron Blair and Steve Ferrone expertly sustains the momentum, Benmnot Tench’s organ swoops in at the margins, and Scott Thurston adds finishing touches like the harmonica on the Chicago blues-style “Burnt Out Town.” For all the power and thrust of the music, Petty learns from the mistakes of Mojo and keeps things tuneful and hook-filled, spinning choruses that succinctly center each song.

The potency of the lyrics in first-person confessionals like “Fault Lines” (“I got a few of my own fault lines running under my life”) and “Forgotten Man” (“I feel like a four-letter word”) is underscored by the electric vibrancy of the music. When things slow down on “Full Grown Boy” and “Sins Of My Youth,” Petty conveys the ache of characters wanting to be loved yet unable to get out of their own way in order for that to happen.

With the notable exception of his 1983 standout Southern Accents, Petty has never strived much for thematic unity on his albums. Yet there is a subtle thread permeating Hypnotic Eye, as many songs concern those who have been marginalized by society and what they do about it. It starts with “American Dream Plan B,” which could have been an “I Won’t Back Down” rehash had the songwriter not so winningly inhabited a rough-hewn, bruised, yet resilient character. Hinting throughout the song at lack of opportunity and musing on the similarities between the “American Dream” and a “political scheme,” this guy eventually decides to go for the gusto anyway: “My success is anybody’s guess/ But like a fool I’m betting on happiness.”

“Power Drunk” could be taking aim at a cop, a politician, or anybody willing to use their position to work the advantage on those in their midst. Petty sings, “You and I are left in the wind/ In the wake of a rich man’s sin.” The haves-and-have-nots theme is played out more explicitly on “Burnt Out Town,” where the narrator compares his lot in life to the elite: “This is a burnt out town, new emperor, same clothes/ They’re dancing on glass ceilings while their filthy money flows/ Yes, and here I am stealing gas with a garden hose.”

While “Burnt Out Town” softens the blow with Petty’s typically askew humor, closing track “Shadow People” is no laughing matter. Over an ominous mid-tempo groove, he contemplates societal divisiveness and what that does to people. Of one gun-toting character, he sings, “And he’s scary as hell ‘cause when he’s afraid/ He’ll destroy everything that he don’t understand.” Petty’s final lament that “I feel like a shadow’s falling over me” is chilling and heartbreaking all at once.

Hypnotic Eye is a bastion of consistent excellence; only nutty character sketch “Red River” feels like a time-waster. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the album is that even though it occasionally resembles the best Heartbreakers stuff, it still feels like a progression, musically and lyrically, into fertile new territory. “No one can say I left without a fight,” Petty sings at one point. No sensible rock music fan would ever say that, but it’s still both reassuring and exhilarating that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are still bringing that fight with such intense brilliance after all these years.