[rating=9.00]
Hypnotic Eye is vintage Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. In fact, it may rank as one of the two or three best albums the veteran rockers have ever done. Firing on all pistons like a well-tuned automobile, the band is clearly inspired by songs in which Petty vividly renders his own personality and those of the characters he creates. Ryan Ulyate deserves his co-producer (with Petty and Campbell) credit here, not just for the detailed clarity of the sound he captures, but also for the scope of a sonic landscape that stretches the stereo spectrum high, wide and deep. The long time engineer for the group, like everyone involved in this project (the product of work dating back three years, according to the credits in the enclosed booklet), performs in a most impassioned manner.
In the very opening number, “American Dream Plan B,” Petty underlines the premise of this record: “I got a dream and I’m gonna fight till I get it right!” As drummer Steve Ferrone swings with swagger, bassist Ron Blair swoops and dives underneath a delicious mix of acoustic and electric guitars, through which guitarist Mike Campbell’s short, sweet solo cuts like a scythe. Petty is equally straight with himself on “Fault Lines,” seeing the weakness in his adopted home state California’s topography a metaphor for the life he’s constructed for himself, then offering more revelatory asides of the different records he’s made over the years, through the metaphor of a high-wire artist.
New tunes on Hypnotic Eye such as “U Get Me High,” not only compare favorably to previous TP classics like “Straight Into Darkness, but should become seamlessly integrated into the hit-laden TP & H stage repertoire. “Full Grown Boy,” certainly deserves to for the way Campbell’s liquid lines flow easily around the ringing notes of Benmont Tench’s acoustic piano. Likewise. the hammering rocker “All You Can Carry,” where he offers more pithy picking; the long-standing right hand man of this bandleader doubtless feels freed by the presence of Scott Thurston, (particularly when the multi-instrumentalist plays rhythm guitar with as much panache as he does on “Power Drunk”).
As with the perfectly appropriate opening number, the self-referential “Forgotten Man” isn’t just an observation from Tom Petty on his public profile, but his private self as well, which makes the modified Bo Diddley beat upon which he constructs the song even more appropriate: the man is aware of his roots and proud of them, though not slavishly so. Accordingly then, as he intones the half-spoken, half-sung story of “Burnt Out Town,” over a modified blues shuffle, he doesn’t just invoke the influence of Bob Dylan, he posits himself as an heir apparent to the mantle of legendary rocker.
With an ominous air conjured as much by the portentous gait of the rhythm section as the keyboardist’s spooky organ line, “Shadow People” is an ideal closer to Hypnotic Eye, especially as it serves as a virtual microcosm of the album. The track’s upbeat false ending, followed in short order by the quick bright coda sung and played by Tom Petty by himself, offers all the resolute, forward-thinking optimism, not to mention instrumental contrast, on display in the music that precedes it.
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