Let's POLL Another Joint: Tom Petty WILDFLOWERS

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

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.

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

I really like the guitar tones on cabin and honey bee

yeah absolutely! those guitars sound amazing.

this album is like digital mastering at its finest

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

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.

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

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.