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At some point in time, musicians decide they want to cut the album they’ve always wanted to record. In short, they want to sing to please themselves, rather than their fans. If anyone has earned the right to do that, it would be Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Sometimes it’s something that everyone else also wants to listen to and sometimes it’s not. Unfortunately, Mojo falls into the “not” category.
The band opens up with “Jefferson Jericho Blues,” a rockin’ blues song about Thomas Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemings. Then they smooth on over into a Moody Blues-sounding tune called “First Flash of Freedom.” Later, “Don’t Pull Me Over” picks up with this same mood.
Most of the time, Tom Petty doesn’t even sound like Tom Petty, but slow and melancholy songs like “The Trip to Pirates Cove” and “No Reason to Cry” come the closest to familiar-sounding territory.
“Candy” and “U.S. 41” sound a lot like something you’d hear in a 1950s blues bar on the rundown end of town. Except for one or two tunes, the entire Mojo album begins to blend into one great big same old sound, one right after another.
It’s been said that Tom Petty took a left turn off the reservation with Mojo, with no plans to return. Maybe he should. Give me “Running Down a Dream” or “Don’t Come Around Here No More”—not this stuff.
If you want to listen to an artist who’s done something different in a good way, try John Mellencamp’s Life, Death, Love and Freedom. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers may have enjoyed this cut of their music, but Mojo is destined to make its way to the back of my closet, where it’ll find a home among all the other music I rarely, or never, listen to anymore.
