Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers | Mojo

Most Likely To: let Tom Petty cross another goal off his bucket list now that no one is paying much attention anymore.

Tom Petty is perhaps the most universally liked person in rock music. Nearly every artist will have their detractors, be they Bob Dylan, U2, Radiohead, John Mayer, or Lady Gaga–chances are anyone reading this knows someone who profoundly hates one or more of those people. (Put me down for loathing everything about Mayer.) But one could search far and wide and never come across anyone who claims to hate Tom Petty.

No generation of hipsters have ever had a problem with him, classic rockers embraced him like no other artist who emerged in the mid-1970s, and even your mom likes that “Free Falling” song. When Rick Rubin needed a band that could help Johnny Cash reach a new generation of fans without alienating the old one, he called on Petty & Company. The worst anyone seems to feel towards Petty is indifference. Nobody actively dislikes him. Petty’s innate likeability served him very well for the last quarter of the 20th century.

Nearly every album he released in those 25 years launched at least one song into the Top 40, and they were all consistently decent. He’s only released one universally agreed upon classic album–Damn the Torpedoes–but he’s never released an actual bad one. No one has ever really needed to be a Petty completist, but by the same token no one has ever really had to worry that they were wasting their money if they decided to grab any one of his albums on a whim.

Things changed for Petty with the turn of the century, though. He suddenly found himself no longer a musician who could reliably expect to end up on the radio with each new album, but instead was now one of those elder statesmen who made his living touring constantly while occasionally putting out albums that no one at any of his tour stops really cared much about hearing anything from.

He paused briefly to bitch about this turn of the worm with The Last DJ, then seemed to shrug his shoulders, say “what the hell,” and proceeded with doing things he’d always wanted to do and could now that he no longer had to worry which song was going to be the single. He recorded an album on which he played every instrument himself, then reformed his pre-Heartbreakers combo Mudcrutch to make their recorded debut 30 years after they broke up, and continued touring the hell out of the world.

With Mojo, he’s reunited with The Heartbreakers and checked another box off the to-do list, recording live in the studio with the band for the first time in their long careers together. The result is a loosey-goosey affair of extended country-blues jamming that Petty and his buddies obviously had a great time recording and will probably have a great time performing live but which only provides a moderately good time when listened to.

Like everything else Petty and the Heartbreakers have ever recorded, Mojo is likeable. They play things shit-hot when they need to, such as on “Jefferson Jericho Blues,” or lazily shuffling on “Lover’s Touch” or nearly poppy on “Candy.” The one thing they never really play on the album is anything particularly memorable. It’s rewarding enough to be worth hearing, but not compelling enough to demand to be heard.

It’s all good, but nothing on Mojo even approaches having a hook on par with Petty’s best work, and one gets the impression that Petty really doesn’t care. He wasn’t after hit singles here. He wanted to jam with his friends and had a good time doing it. No one would begrudge Petty the opportunity to do whatever he wants at this point, even if it’s not going to contribute anything much to his next greatest hits collection.