My Second Favourite Tom Petty Studio Album Has Just Gotten E
Frederick Baptist | Singapore | 04/29/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"After the brilliant "Wildflowers", this is my favourite Tom Petty album although "purist" fans may prefer "Damn the Torpedoes" or some other album dating from his Heartbreakers days or may complain that this is more of a Travelling Wilburys' album and yet this is still very much a Tom Petty album albeit with lots of Jeff Lynne included and yet is still very, very good.
I remember playing along with my acoustic guitar to all the tracks from this album and singing along as well; very few cds were as much fun for me to listen to and to actually get involved with with my guitar as this one is. Composition-wise, only 3 of the 12 tracks here are solely credited to Tom Petty with an astounding 7 tracks being co-written with Jeff Lynne from ELO and another 2 with Mike Campbell with all 3 co-producing this album.
Tom Petty appears to have been inspired though with the involvement of the rest of the Travelling Wilbury's and so raised his game for this great album. The late, great ex-Beatle George Harrison played acoustic guitar and sang backup vocals on "I Won't Back Down" while the other late, great Roy Orbison did backup vocals on "Zombie Zoo".
This mini-lp replica sleeve (mlps) version is also a treat for fans as the sound quality has been remastered and is a definite improvement over the old cd that I used to play so often before and also includes a cardboard square replica of the original lp center circle and faithfully reproduces the vinyl inner jacket as well as having a 12-page insert with all the lyrics in both English and Japanese.
The price of this baby though seems extremely high and I would have preferred thicker cardboard and a better designed mlps to justify the extra price but at least the sound quality is an improvement over the copy that I had."
