Mojo. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

My very first exposure to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers was way back in the eighties, with the track called, I Won't Back Down. It had a catchy enough tune and a rather laid back vocal style. Over the years, I never heard much about Tom or his band mates, you can say that it's as if I had almost forgotten about them. Until this 2010 re-issue album called Mojo, that is. I've been spinning this album in the past few months regularly.

This album was re-issued on both LP and Blu-ray formats. Purchase either and they come with a code to unlock this stereo only 24/48 hi rez music file, available from the Official Tom Petty website. Some may sneeze at the lowly 48kHz sampling rate, but I can tell you that this recording is stunning in sound quality, much better than many of the over rated 24/96 files that I've heard. So don't be mislead by the numbers game! There's an almost analog like feel to this digital file, much favoured by 80's rock music recordings. The tone, texture and harmonic overtones of the amplified electric guitars are just beautifully reproduced with life like quality. There's enough bandwidth and unrestricted yet propulsive dynamic range in the recording to encourage toe tapping while listening. The analog like feel of the recording also captures much of the studio "air" and ambiance, real or otherwise.

Now for me good recording quality alone does not exactly maketh an excellent album. The music matters just as much, if not more! And I love the music by Tom Petty here. There's a typical 80's throwback in the scheme of  arrangement and vocal style of radio friendly rock genre(remember Yes, Journey and Boston amongst them?). There are a total of 15 tracks here of which there's more than a few to keep me from losing interest. The following are my favorite tracks, it starts with track 3, titled Running Man's Bible, followed by a very dreamy sounding The Trip To Pirate's Cove, then the very dynamic and hard hitting Candy.

Tom retreats in to a more sombre mood with No Reason To Cry(that softly, softly cymbal play here is highly addictive for an audiophile), before exploding in to a full blown hard rocking I Should Have Known It. From there onwards there's a Reggae inspired, I Shot The Sherif like cop caper titled Don't Pull Me Over.

I was so impressed by this Tom Petty album, that I went on to explore further by downloading another album, titled Damn The Torpedoes as 24/96 hi rez file from HD Tracks.  How's that for rediscovering Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers?