Echo is an album of “lasts”: The last Tom Petty album produced by Rick Rubin, the last Heartbreakers album to feature bassist Howie Epstein (so debauched he didn’t even make it to the photo shoot for the album cover), and thick with songs documenting the dissolution of Petty’s marriage. Despite this, Echo is not exactly what you’d call a “bummer record.” The darkness hanging over the album manifests itself not as bitterness and wound-licking, but as emancipation; it seems to use the shadows as cover for escape. Petty and the band sound great throughout: “Room At The Top” starts things off on a melancholy note, but concludes with an unexpected, exorcising climax, while “Counting On You” is the Heartbreakers in slow-burn mode, with Campbell’s casually brilliant guitar chopping its way into view like lightning across a black evening sky. The songwriting is worthy of such sterling sounds: “Free Girl Now” is part bitterness, part ball-busting, and it’s fun to imagine Lucky, the hapless character on Mike Judge’s King Of The Hill who earned his nickname after being granted a settlement after “slipping on pee-pee at the Costco,” delivering the lyrics (Petty voices the character on the show); the aching and intimate “Lonesome Sundown” is Petty’s most heartfelt and convincing love song in years; and “Swingin,'” a hair-brained tune that sounds like it couldn’t have been conceived anywhere but the garage, is good, coquettish fun. There are some “firsts” here, too: Campbell takes a rare lead vocal on “I Don’t Wanna Fight” (spoiler: he sounds a lot like Petty), while drummer Steve Ferrone, whose polished, no-frills percussion style would rankle some longtime fans, makes his debut as a full-time Heartbreaker here, following the dismissal of original drummer Stan Lynch. One of the better latter-day Tom Petty albums, Echo sounds worth whatever pain was required to make it.