Quick Hits, Vol. 265 (Tom Petty, together PANGEA, Sturgill Simpson, Fleet Foxes)

Tom Petty - Wildflowers and All the Rest.  Wildflowers is such an interesting album to me.  I loved it when it came out - that was right when I started college, so it reminds me of some of the exciting new experiences of leaving the roost and setting out on my own for the first time.  I have a clear memory of playing it with a group of older guys as I drove them to a bar, hoping that they liked my musical choice so that I could get in with their crowd.  More recently, I was with two other guys the other night and asked them what the best Tom Petty album is, and both of them said Wildflowers.  Which I find fascinating.  I love it, but I still think that Full Moon Fever is better, and I might like Into the Great Wide Open more as well.  Hard to measure that, of course, but I think I'd stack them that way.  Meanwhile, Rolling Stone's top 500 albums had it as Wildflowers, Damn the Torpedoes,  then Full Moon Fever (and no Into the Great...).  So my friends are in good company.  Personally, I think that this album took on a mythic quality after Tom died, as many of the Nashville cool kids and indie folkies and other people started pumping it up as their key inspiration for their music.  And so it went from a low key album that didn't feel like a big deal at the time (made it to #8 on the Billboard charts and went 3x platinum, while Full Moon Fever made it to #3 and went 5x platinum, so it actually was pretty large at the time) to a touchstone album for a lot of people.

This is a re-release, 20+ years later, with a crapton of extra goodies.  And the re-release has already shot up to the top of the Rock Albums Charts for Billboard.  The story is that the original album was supposed to be a double disc with many more songs, but the label balked at that and requested a slimmed down version (that was released as the original album).  Many of the leftover songs then came out on the soundtrack for She's the One, in 1996.  Petty apparently always wished that he could re-release the album as he had originally imagined it, so part of this release is granting him that wish, posthumously.  The original was 15 songs, with "You Don't Know How It Feels" as the hit, and some minor hits with some of the other ones.  Now they're tacked on All The Rest, another ten songs that Petty had wanted on the original release, as well as an album of Home Recordings and a Live album.

The All The Rest Disc is good stuff.  I know a number of those tunes already because of course I bought the She's the One Soundtrack when it came out.  But "Leave Virginia Alone" is good stuff, and it wasn't on that second album.

Hard to imagine why that didn't make the original or the soundtrack.  Sounds super clean and right in line with the rest of the album.  Dig that new disc of stuff.  But the Home Recordings disc isn't too terribly interesting.  I guess it is cool to hear weaker versions of some of the final songs to see how he wrote less good versions before he cleaned them up and made them right, but that kind isn't all that cool.  It's more fun to imagine that he was so perfect that the best versions just spilled from his brain, tripped down to his fingers, and were launched into the world.

The live disc just bums me out.  Never got to see TP play live, and I'm definitely worse off for it.  These songs sound great live.  One weird thing is that "Walls (Circus)" is on this Live disc, probably the best song on She's The One soundtrack, but it isn't on the All The Rest disc.  Maybe that one wasn't written for the Wildflowers sessions and was written specifically for the soundtrack?  Wikipedia doesn't say.  "It's Good to Be King" goes all jammy at almost 12 minutes and I love it.  The live title track is fabulous too.

A weird note on the Wikipedia pages for both Wildflowers and She's the One - neither of those two albums were included when Petty's entire back catalog was released in high-resolution audio back in 2015.  I wonder why?

Anyway, that became less of a Quick Hit and more of a novel, but whatever, this album is worth your time to go enjoy again.  Go to it.

together PANGEA - Bulls and Roosters.  2017 album.  This one came to me because one of Drew Magary's fans suggested one of their songs and he mentioned it in an article.  It's pretty fun - new wave-y guitars and fast paces with some kind of punky and cheerful vocals bouncing around on the top.  Maybe like if The Hives were into Elvis Costello's backing band.  I also swear I heard the Goo Goo Dolls at one point.  It's very fun stuff.  The opening track has a little surfiness to it and sounds bright and happy.  Second track is kind of slower punk surf with some slide guitar.  It's all over the place, but the common theme is that I enjoy it.  Top track is "Money on It," with 2.3 million streams.

Don't know that I would have picked that as my favorite tune on here, but it's fine.  But, overall, the whole album is a good time.  I've gone back to it for a few days now and each time it puts me in a good mood.

Sturgill Simpson - Cuttin' Grass.  I absolutely LOVE this album.  These are bluegrass versions of his previously released songs, and the players that he has surrounded himself for the backing instrumentation are freaking stone-cold killers.  I looked up who they are, and none of them ring a bell to me as artists in their own right, except for Mandolin player/singer Sierra Hull, who I reviewed an album from a while back (and is bad ass).  But each tune bristles with bluegrass perfection - bouncy banjos, lively fiddle, weaving and nimble guitar lines, as well as great harmonies from the collected singers.  And its super fun to hear familiar songs re-imagined like this.  "Long White Line," or "Turtles All the Way Down," or the lovely "Breaker's Roar," it's crazy fun.  And while I know a bunch of his music, I have to readily admit that a handful of these tunes ring no bells to me, which is a very fun deal - I get new-to-me tunes in a perfect bluegrass wrapping.  The top track for streams on here is "I Don't Mind," with 1.6 million streams.

That one turns down the banjo's presence and leans more on the mandolin, guitar, and his lovely voice.  Lyrically, it's also a beautiful track, just a pure love song sung in with conviction and longing.  And I dug into it's history a little bit, because it doesn't ring any bells from the albums that I own.  Ends up it came from a pre-solo band called Sunday Valley, that Simpson belonged to before he moved to Nashville.  This is making me so very aggravated that the Sturgill/Tyler concert that was supposed to happen back in March got cancelled.  Between the two of them, I could have floated my way through the summer on those two performances.

Fleet Foxes - Shore.  I love some of the old Fleet Foxes albums.  Beautiful harmonies, clever story-telling and lyrics, and just an overall amazing vibe.  Those discs have soundtracked good things in my life.  My first run through this album was a hollow one, I wasn't feeling it at all.  But after some repeat listens, I've decided that its actually pretty good.  Not great, but still pleasant.  Some of the tracks leave me wanting because it sounds almost like it's just Robin Pecknold, all alone.  The opening track doesn't even sound like one of their tunes - different singer entirely.  But then the second track comes on - "Sunblind" - and it absolutely sounds like the normal vibe.  The third song makes me think it is about to be some Billie Eilish shit for the first 8 seconds, before the normal music kicks in.  As with the other albums from these guys, the music is a pleasing, gentle deal, and it's the lyrics that make it seem like something more than just a soft, warm dive into AM Gold indie.  Like “I could worry through each night, Find something unique to say, I could pass as erudite, But it’s a young man’s game,” or "I'm gonna swim for a week in, Warm American Water with dear friends."  I wanna do that too! The top streamer is "Can I Believe You" with 5.8 million streams.

Oh, yeah, that's the one that sounds like Eilish at the start.  Dig the harmonies.  I really like them in "Young Man's Game" as well.  Just a nice album of warm music.