Tom Petty Readies New Heartbreakers Album Hypnotic Eye, Deluxe Wildflowers Reissue, Live LP

Tom Petty Readies New Heartbreakers Album Hypnotic Eye, Deluxe Wildflowers Reissue, Live LP

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers will soon release their 13th studio album, titled Hypnotic Eye, according to Rolling Stone. The 11-track collection, which is co-produced by Petty, Mike Campbell, and Ryan Ulyate, is expected this summer on Reprise. RS’ David Fricke calls it Petty’s “return to the concise Sixties-rock classicism and drive of his first great New Wave-era albums, 1976’s Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers and 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It.”

The Hearbreakers — Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Ron Blair, Steve Ferrone, and Scott Thurston — have been working on Hypnotic Eye with Petty in Los Angeles on and off since 2011. The first songs born in those sessions, Petty tells RS, were scrapped because they sounded too much like “the blues bag” of their last album, 2010’s Mojo. Tracks that ultimately made the cut include “American Dream Plan B,” “Faultlines,” “Red River,” “Burn Out Town,” and “Shadow People.” Petty and band will tour in support of Hypnotic Eye this year.

Also on the way, possibly by Christmas, is a 20th anniversary two-disc reissue of Petty’s rustic solo gem Wildflowers. It’ll have 10 previously unreleased songs. Fricke writes:

Petty claims one of those finds, “Somewhere Under Heaven,” came as a surprise when he heard it again: “I did not remember writing it, recording it, anything.” He smiles. “And it was really good — uptempo but very unusual, in some strange time signature.”

Finally, there are plans for a live album documenting last year’s intimate theater runs at NYC’s Beacon and LA’s Henry Fonda.

Revisit a 2003 Heartbreakers performance of “Love Is A Long Road” below, and think of how chill it would be to see the War On Drugs open for ‘em at some point.

[Tom Petty @ Fonda Theater photo by Andrew Youssef.]

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