Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - Echo FLAC album

Echo sounds exactly like what the grainy black & white cover photo would suggest, stepping into spring, with summer just around the corner, yet unable to shake off the memories of the harsh winter that just passed. There are many reasons for this, it’s a very personal album, though why Tom thought it needed to be shared is beyond me … but then, that’s what artists do, they share.

The song “Swingin’” defined the album for me, “Swingin’” defined that year for me, I watched a woman I deeply loved slip away, slip between my fingers, pass into the great unknown, she truly went down swingin’, causing me to feel fragile mortal and lost, at the end of life just as a new decade was about to reveal itself. I was 48 in 1999, and there’s nothing more I wanted to do than to take a road trip with this album playing in the background.

Echo is a record that procrastinates in many ways, certainly all of the songs aren’t great, but those that are, are relentlessly so, bestowing a sense of adventure while running from an undefined past. It would be far too easy to simply assess this album by revealing the historic genesis for each song, where by doing so, one would instantly lose the essence, the theater, along with the internal dialog songs like “Rhino Skin” and “Counting On You” reveal. A handful of these numbers are unnerving, deeply haunting, challenging the nature of your being and the place you occupy within yourself, standing as beacons or compass markers, where if you travel in all four of those directions at once, you would simply meet yourself right back where you started. And in essence, that’s arguably just what Tom Petty was doing, occupying the space he’d always been in, and me, I’m over there on the couch listening, traveling as far as my dreams will take me these days.

This collection of songs is romantic, beautiful, composed of controlled anthems surrounding defiance, rebellious love, independence and emancipation, signifying that everyone reaching the latter half of their life is hardly ready to roll up and die, as there are still doors that need to knocked on, windows to crawl through, along with new visions to be embraced. Echo enchantingly comes off as a comfortably worn and warm record, rising up with a considered and steady hand, filled with oddball charm and determination. There’s also a purity found here, along with a defining sense of simplicity, where Petty steadfastly refuses to ruin his songs with crafty window dressings.

Yes, it’s a middle of the road record, and with my life, sometimes that’s just what I need, some great tunes to take control of the wheel and head me safely back down the middle of the road.

Review by Jenell Kesler

Published in 1996 on the successor to the soundtrack for the movie she's the One we hear Tom Petty as we are used to for years. His lazy, drawling Sung ' with clearly audible, a feel-pop influences of The Byrds and Bob Dylan is in comparison with its previous plates nothing changed. The excellent production of Petty, guitarist Mike Campbell and Rick Rubin and as always make strong songs Echo is more than worth it. Music for in the car.