Into The Great Wide Open

If I have any complaints, it has to do with the first five songs. While all excellent tunes when listened to on their own (especially the first track, the wonderful "Learning to Fly"), they don't sound as good when played next to each other. The first five tracks on the album are all the same sort of song... they boast similar sounds, and one will remind you of the next. There really isn't a lot of variety to the album until you reach track six, "All or Nothing", and from that point on the album suffers no more problems... the songs are all quite different from one another, and each one becomes a real pleasure to listen to as you hear the one preceding it give way to something new. My favorite tune is probably a tie between "You and I Will Meet Again" and the final track, "Built to Last". Also, in spite of my complaint about the songs being too homogenous up till track six... when we actually **get** to track six, I hate to say it but "All Or Nothing" just isn't a terribly interesting song. It really does nothing for me, and is really the low point of the album.

One more thing to mention before I close. It's not a complaint so much as something I wish they would have done a little more of. Closing track nine, "Out in the Cold", comes a surreal little moment when we hear Petty asking, speaking after the song has faded out, "What's in here?" We hear a door creak open, followed by a mixture of clucking chickens, a barking dog, and the sound of someone very poorly playing the harmonica (basically doing it as well as I do). It's a very bizarre, intruiging moment that's over all too soon... It's almost creepy, really.

Anyway, I liked this album quite a lot, in spite of the rather generic quality of the first five songs, when played one after another (take them out of the context, however, and they really are great, though the title song, "Into the Great Wide Open", just isn't quite as much fun as the other four, but if I were to catch it on the radio I think I'd still be happy). Perhaps if the order of songs had been rearranged slightly it would have been better? Oh well. I like it anyway, and you'll have a good time if you check it out. It doesn't take long to like.

Carry on Carry on,

MN

I'm not sure whether one of the other reviewers was right about many of the lyrics being trite, or whether another was right that they're meant to be impressionistic. Certainly they're often unclear, sometimes telling a story that really does have an interesting or impassioned feel but that is difficult to follow (E.g. "Too Good to Be True" or "Out in the Cold"). I can't figure out whether the title track is terminally silly, terminally jaded, or both. Does it contain a serious jab at the music business, or is it just meant as goofy fun? (I always thought the latter, but who knows after "The Last DJ"?) And what on earth is "the dark of the sun"? Ignoring that meaningless phrase, the song has fine lyrics.

"Into the Great Wide Open" is a transitional CD. It marks the end of the Jeff Lynne collaboration, which worked to slightly better effect on the previous "Full Moon Fever" as well as on the brilliant Traveling Wilburys CD's. It also marks Tom Petty writing more substantive lyrics again and reuniting with his longtime band, though the lyrics and the band's sound come fully back into their own only on the following CD, "Wildflowers".