stone TOM diminutive "HIGHWAY...

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TOM diminutive "HIGHWAY COMPANION" (AMERICAN)

Rating 3 1/2

The title and a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the advance hype for Tom Petty's third solo album -- his first release since the Heartbreakers' controversial, music-industry-bashing "The Last DJ" in 2002 -- promised that these 12 strains would be the perfect soundtrack for a road trip from a real master of the form: Just think of all those "listenin' to Tom while banging forward the steering wheel" scenes in Hollywood films, like as "Jerry Maguire" and "The Silence of the Lambs."

yet midway through the disc, in the midst of a psychedelic freak- revealed during "Turn This Car Around," the artist press ons us to "turn this car around -- I'm going back!"

"Highway Companion," the third solo album of Petty's career and his first since "Wildflowers" (1994) without the band that has backed him for the last 30 years, turn rounds out to be less about forward moment and forging ahead in life than it is about looking back. although he's only 55, Petty is talking like an antiquated man at the end of a protracted and very hard road, a theme he any amounts up in a line from another canzonet from the new disc: "You're flirting with time, baby / And maybe / Time, baby, is catching up with you" ("Flirting With Time").

Early in the recent millennium, Petty endured one of the greatest in number difficult periods of his life. In the late '90 he separated from his longtime wife and lived in seclusion for a time in a shack in succession the Pacific Palisades, battling clinical depression. He recoiled in 2001, when he married his existing wife, Dana York. But in 2003 a year after he fired the Heartbreakers' longtime bassist, Howie Epstein died of a heroin overdose, and that los willinged the songwriter to start thinking about his have mortality.

by way of all accounts, life is neat good for Petty these days. moreover he's is nonetheless hinting that this summer's tour at the Heartbreakers may be his last, and he's starting to consider what kind of legacy he'll leave behind in the music world. "I've been so a nut, I wonder by what mode long I'm gonna live sometimes. I've just lived in the same manner hard," he told Jaan Uhelszki in an interview for Harp magazine, common of only a handful he's done to support the strange album. "I think a doom about what time I have left and what kind of mark I want to leave. I might quit the road. I think I've had enough of that -- unless I haven't had enough of playing."

Indeed, with the exception of a not many contributions from longtime Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and husbandman Jeff Lynne -- who filled the same part on Petty's solo debut, "Full secondary planet Fever" (1989), as well as performing with him in the Traveling Wilburys -- little handled all of the instruments in the studio for "Highway Companion," including periodical emphasis guitar, drums, harmonica, electric piano, bass and lead, and backing vocals. besides while he clearly had a certain fun hammering out a not many of his trademark jangly rocker including "Flirting With Time," on the same level the handful of upbeat melodys have somber themes or cautionary warnings about living too hard or too fast.

The deceptively bouncy "Ankle Deep" is about a thoroughbred that breaks its leg in a big race; presciently, it was written a year before Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro's career-ending injury. "Down South" exhibit tos flashes of Petty's sardonic wit when he sings about wanting to "Create myself down southerly / Impress all the women / allege a title to I'm Samuel Clemens / Wear seersucker and white linens," unless the ostensible purpose of his trip to the Dixie where he was raised is to "sell the family headstones [and] make useful all my back loans," as if he's making preparations for his admit funeral. Even the somewhat forced declaration about needing to party hearty from one side of to the other the "Big Weekend" -- "I ne a big weekend / Kickin' up the dust" -- is suited by the observation that "if you don't stream you rust."

That last line is an obvious nod to Neil Young's "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of the Blue)" with its notion that "It's better to reduce to ashes out / Than it is to rust," an idea that has all too oftentimes been misinterpreted by younger artists hell-bent onward self-destruction, a la Kurt Cobain in his infamous suicide note. unless the Young song that a great deal of "Highway Companion" actually recalls is "Old Man," with its poignant vision of as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but the sadness and the nobility of aging. Like Young, insignificant isn't bemoaning the fact that he has inscribeed the twilight of his life; he's looking back and thinking that it's elegant without grandeur darn cool to have reached this point and had in such a manner many incredible experiences along the way.

With varying classs of quiet, largely acoustic arrangements, melancholy productions, haunting hypochondriacs underpinnings and laid-back tempos, the majority of the psalms on "Highway Companion" fit this bill -- "Night Driver," "Jack" "Square One" "Damaged through Love" and "This Old Town" among them. Regardless of what you may have heard, according to no means does this make for a great driving album; you'd be better on the farther side taking a handful of Ambien before getting behind the wheel than listening to this upon a long road trip and expecting it to hold fast you energized. But "Highway Companion" is another gorgeous, heartfelt, wistful and moving statement from a great artist who really has no reason to think twice about his place in strength history.