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Mudcrutch offers more nostalgia for Tom Petty fans than it does detours for the iconic frontman of the Heartbreakers. The eponymous album is a collection of tracks dating back as far as the outfit's inception in Gainesville, FL, in 1970, as well as a few new nuggets written to round out the release, all recorded over a two-week stretch in August 2007. That said, they could just have easily been recorded more than a quarter-century ago, as the stripped-down, 14-track collection is chock full of country jingle and roots-rock jangle, offering a retro-fitted run through familiar territory to fans of Petty's illustrious career.

Lead single "Scare Easy" and "The Wrong Thing to Do" wouldn't disappoint as Heartbreakers tracks. That's not to say the rest of the album couldn't make the stretch, but where "This is a Good Street" and "Bootleg Flyer" ramble right along in a headspace similar to that of The Allman Brothers and "Six Days on the Road" could feature Jerry Lee Lewis on the keys and be right at home amidst the vintage catalog of Sun Records, the bulk of the album's harvest is ripe with back porch picking and a heavy folk aesthetic. "Orphan of the Storm" gently weeps while the music softly sweeps with the vibrato of steel guitar, "Queen of the Go-Go Girls" is a listless ode to a life left of center, and "June Apple" offers an fleeting, barefoot dash through an instrumental orchard of rollicking riffs.

When the dust settles, Mudcrutch is everything it ever promised to be; little more and nothing less. Three decades in the making, it offers a great flashback, yet little reason to look forward, as there's not a whole lot here that Tom Petty hasn't done before, and probably even less that he won't do, in one form or another, again.

—Paul Gargano
05.07.08