Let's POLL Another Joint: Tom Petty WILDFLOWERS

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i dig it, the riff wins me over and the lyrics are generic enough that i don't object lol.

ꙮ (map), Friday, 12 May 2023 17:54 (eleven months ago) link

"it's hard to find a friend" is another one i really like.

ꙮ (map), Friday, 12 May 2023 17:58 (eleven months ago) link

"You Wreck Me" is great. It does stick out like a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers track, but it's enjoyable enough that I can't complain.

It's funny, the first five tracks is easily the most engaging and enjoyable stretch of the album, but they could almost be used for another album - the whole point of Wildflowers doesn't really coalesce until you listen through the mopey and bitter ones that come later. ("Time to Move On" does fit in with those but it comes in pretty early as track 3.)

The other problem with "Honey Bee" and "Cabin Down Below" is that they sound like boring fake blues pastiches. Rolling Stone originally compared one of them to CCR/John Fogerty's work, and to be fair, I can kind of hear where they're coming from, but it's missing a crucial element to make it work on that level - Fogerty's vocals. I never had a problem with Petty's vocals, but it doesn't have what Fogerty's voice has to make this stuff work.

birdistheword, Friday, 12 May 2023 18:03 (eleven months ago) link

i think the riffs have an enjoyable malevolence to them. the electric guitars on this album always sound amazing and the playing is always tasteful. but the subject of those songs is "i have a boner." they're kinda rapey tbh. i don't know solo fogerty but ccr didn't really do that as a subject iirc.

ꙮ (map), Friday, 12 May 2023 18:43 (eleven months ago) link

Fogerty might be one of the few white male singer-songwriters who rarely wrote about boners and women.

the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 May 2023 18:45 (eleven months ago) link

When Big Thief released their album last year, my first thought was "This reminds me of Wildflowers." Light not shallow, hooky by design, the song craft is so fine that I have trouble separating the casually masterful from the merely casual.

the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 May 2023 18:47 (eleven months ago) link

love that connection, Alfred.

"Honey Bee" at least feels almost like an homage to old blues, could be a companion song to "I'm a King Bee" after all. "Cabin Down Below" is completely forgettable but I do enjoy it mostly based on what you said there, map, about how great this record just sounds

Lavator Shemmelpennick, Friday, 12 May 2023 18:48 (eleven months ago) link

I really like the guitar tones on cabin and honey bee

brimstead, Friday, 12 May 2023 18:56 (eleven months ago) link

yeah absolutely! those guitars sound amazing.

ꙮ (map), Friday, 12 May 2023 19:06 (eleven months ago) link

this album is like digital mastering at its finest

ꙮ (map), Friday, 12 May 2023 19:07 (eleven months ago) link

thought it was weird they remastered it. og sounds perfect.

Spottie, Friday, 12 May 2023 19:49 (eleven months ago) link

Changing the name from "You Rock Me" to "You Wreck Me" made a big difference for that song. I love it as a kind of throwback Heartbreakers rocker, and it cooked live.

FWIW, the original CD was mastered with quite a bit of digital compression added. When they remastered it for the deluxe set, they actually did three different remasterings: a “loud” version for streaming (using a similar amount of compression), a less-compressed version for the CD release (which does sound better to me than the original CD), and a version with no compression/full dynamic range for vinyl and hi-res digital vendors.

birdistheword, Friday, 12 May 2023 23:22 (eleven months ago) link

six months pass...

The making of documentary available on Prime comprised of 16mm film they found in 2020 is enjoyable.

Naive Teen Idol, Friday, 24 November 2023 23:37 (five months ago) link

Since doing a deep dive on him around the time he died I’ve been struck by how much pain Petty quietly lived with for most of his life – from growing up with an abusive father to living with an unstable spouse to becoming a heroin addict in his late forties. This record (and documentary) kind of reinforces that.

Naive Teen Idol, Saturday, 25 November 2023 00:05 (five months ago) link


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