Southern Accents (1985)
1. Rebels
2. It Ain't Nothin' to Me
3. Don't Come Around Here No More
4. Southern Accents
5. Make it Better (Forget About Me)
6. Spike
7. Dogs on the Run
8. Mary's New Car
9. The Best of Everything
While it's probably documented
somewhere, I can only speculate on how and why this album may have come
to pass. Petty had been in a bit of a slump during the past few
years, his last two albums failing to capture the magic of 1979's Damn the Torpedoes. He probably took a
good, hard look at what he was doing as well as what was going on around
him, and decided a major shakeup was needed. Not an easy thing to do.
As a matter of fact, during one of the recording sessions, he got
frustrated, punched a wall and seriously jeopardized his future as a
guitar player with a badly
wounded hand. Fortunately, all was well with the hand eventually, and
I would say that this album is a minor triumph.
No, it's not a classic. It could have been, but there are far more
positives than negatives. First, the title and album cover may mislead
someone who hasn't actually heard the album. One might expect something
of the Lynard Skynard or Allman Brother's Band vein, especially with
Petty sporting a rather beaten down trailer park image himself. Yet
there's not really anything that remotely resembles such a style of music.
Instead, this is one of those records where a "simple" artist pulls out
all the stops, adds every possible ingredient to alter the taste of the
music, and yet still manage to sound like his old self.
There are a few songs with "southern" lyrics - the slow, introspective
title cut and the roaring opening song Rebels, but again, these songs
don't really have any particular southern flavor.
They're both strong cuts though, managing, as stated earlier, to fall
somewhat away from the standard Tom Petty formula. The Rebels
song is complete with brass section, as are many of the songs on here.
Fortunately they're comfortably somewhat hidden in the mix, so this
doesn't come across as a "horn" album. Speaking of different
instruments, the biggest turnaround in style belongs to the psychedelic
spacey Don't Come Around Here No More featuring a guest spot from
The Eurythmics' Dave Stewart. How they got such a bizarre song to sound
so good just shows you how talented Petty and his band mates can be.
The other highlight is the catchy, humorous Spike about a guy
that wears a dog collar and a bunch of homeboys that are somewhat amused
by this as they observe his antics.
Much of the rest of the album tends to get a bit bogged down
at times. It Ain't Nothing to Me is another one of those songs
that is bombarded by instrumentation, and it doesn't sound that bad, but
it tends to sound a little too similar to Make It Better (Forget
About Me) so the overall experience gets diminished somewhat.
Where Petty pushes the envelope and is successful, he's very
successful, and when he falters, he never falls too far from grace.
Despite what a lot of naysayers may say about this album, it has a
strong overall feel that has a lot of overall strengths.
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