Mudcrutch

Maybe it was autumn years' nostalgia that inspired the issue of a Mudcrutch debut LP some 34 years after the band first formed, but Tom Petty's swagger here rivals any of his work as a younger man. Like many a geezer jam session, it opens with group vocals on a comfortable traditional (in this case, "Shady Grove"), but the album quickly rights itself with a slightly menacing single, "Scare Easy." The country inflections and wilting slide guitars that hold things together are played with cool sophistication, the answer to the prayers of Allman Brothers fans.

Even a dude with a track record as golden as Tom Petty's needs to reflect on paths not
taken. Mudcrutch, Petty's pre-Heartbreakers band, released a single and little else in the
mid-Seventies. And that's too bad, since they reunite here for a hot country-rock set that
clearly aspires to, and gets within spitting distance of, genre classics like Sweetheart of the
Rodeo, The Gilded Palace of Sin and American Beauty. If the Heartbreakers had... More >