I was so excited to write this
next review that I put on a t-shirt featuring the band just to put me that much
more in the mood.
Disc 806 is….Hard Promises
Artist: Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers
Year of Release: 1981
What’s up with the Cover? Tom’s in a record store looking
thoughtful and a little pained. Maybe he’s regretting those ‘hard promises’ he
made to himself about only buying that one album he came in for and not
browsing around and buying 4 or 5 more. I know your pain, Tom.
How I Came To Know It: As is often the case with artists
I really like, at some point I make a decision to drill into their back
catalogue. I discovered “Hard Promises” while doing this with Tom Petty,
knowing nothing about the album beyond the fact that “The Waiting” was a single I’d heard on the radio.
How It Stacks Up: I have 15 studio albums by Tom Petty (some
solo, some with the Heartbreakers) and I like all of them to various degrees. I
like “Hard Promises” a lot. So much so that I’m going to bump “Long After Dark”
(reviewed back at Disc 542) down a peg and put it fourth overall.
Ratings: 4 stars but almost 5
With some artists it is worth your time to delve into
their entire music collection. Tom Petty is one of those artists, and “Hard
Promises” is probably the best example why.
If you were to buy Petty’s 1993 Greatest Hits album
you would get exactly one song from “Hard Promises.” If you splurged and bough
the two-disc anthology he released in 2000, you would get two.
Don’t get me wrong, though. “The Waiting” is an exceptional song, and has rightly survived into
our collective musical consciousness 34 years after it was released and the
anthology’s second choice, “Woman in Love”
is pretty amazing too. Both songs are incredible compositions exploring
opposite ends of a relationship. “The
Waiting” is about waiting around at the chance to finally be with the woman
you desire. It uses well-placed minor chords to perfectly capture this
unresolved frustration every guy has experienced.
“Woman in Love
(It’s Not Me)” is the other end of the relationship, when a woman is
leaving you and you don’t know why. The narrator of the song doesn’t get it,
but you get the sense from both the music and lyrics that she was never truly
his in the first place. Petty’s drawling delivery is perfect for frustrated waiting
and broken-hearted confusion in equal measure.
But “Hard Promises” is so much more than these two
hits. Following on the Heartbreakers’ classic record “Damn the Torpedoes” it
shows that they aren’t a fluke of the music industry, but instead clever
songwriters who know how to tell the tales of ordinary men and make them feel
like epics.
“Nightwatchman”
is a song about the sort of person who takes that sort of job. Few
nightwatchmen live for their work, but there they are out in the darkest hours,
putting their lives in danger for little more than minimum wage. The song
incorporates a funky guitar riff that vocalizes the restless energy inside this
person, dreaming of doing something else one day.
“Something Big”
is the perfect song to follow “Nightwatchman.”
It tells the tragic end of someone in a cheap motel trying to make a score and
get out of his hand-to-mouth existence. It isn’t clear by the end of the song
whether he meets his end through violence or overdose, but the fuzzy blues riff
makes it clear it didn’t end well.
The album is pure rock and roll, but finds a lot of
range within that genre. In addition to the aforementioned blues and funk
riffs, the album treats you to fifties harmonies on “Letting You Go” and folksy ballads on “Insider.”
Regardless of what facet of their sound they are
exploring, Petty and the Heartbreakers nail it. Like Bruce Springsteen, Petty
understands how to make chord choices that and emotionally underscore his
lyrics, delivering universal truths through individual characters who come
alive for the 3-5 minutes of the song, but leave us thinking about them long
after it ends.
The production on “Hard Promises” is perfect. There
are a few odd flourishes of organ and piano in places, but only in just the
right amount, like a dash of oregano adding flavour to a sauce. Petty sings
with conviction and honesty and Mike Campbell once again reminded me that he is
one of the most underrated guitar players in rock.
“Hard Promises” affected me in a deeper way than I expected,
and reminded me to play it a lot more often than I do.
Best
tracks: The Waiting, A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me), Nightwatchman,
Something Big, Letting You Go, Insider, The Criminal Kind, You Can Still Change
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