MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS - ANGEL DREAM

Last year's fantastic Wildflowers and All the Rest compilation, a grand total of five discs of songs from those early '90's sessions, was a welcome collection for Petty fans. But it did leave a bit of a problem with his catalogue. The 1996 soundtrack for She's The One had included several of the leftover tracks from those sessions, which now sit properly in the Wildflowers collection. So instead of doubling up on the cuts, the Petty Estate has refashioned She's The One into this new LP, by finding a few new tracks for inclusion. 

The idea was to make the new Angel Dream a coherent album, rather than just a hodgepodge of leftover cuts. Of course, with Petty, his cast-aways are almost always of such quality that this becomes an easier task. Rather than take the approach of a soundtrack, which was how She's The One was assembled, this set is meant to present a normal 12-cut Heartbreakers LP. So we only get one version "Walls," instead of the two versions found on the soundtrack. That's a fantastic song of course, and the same can be said of "Angel Dream" and "Climb That Hill" plus his covers of Lucinda Williams' "Change The Locks" and Beck's "Asshole." Really, being on a soundtrack to a poorly-received movie did these songs no favours, and it sales and chart success suffered for it. Hopefully they'll find a wider audience here.

There are four brand-new songs added here, plus an extended version of "Supernatural Radio." Best of all is another cover, this one a J.J. Cale number called "Thirteen Days," a Southern Gothic piece that could have easily come from Petty's pen. "105 Degrees" may be lyrically slight ("What do you want? Perfection?") but is a classic Heartbreakers jam, one of the last recorded with outgoing drummer/trouble-maker Stan Lynch. "One Of Life's Little Mysteries" is a bit of grin, done in a vaudevillian style. The final new one is actually familiar, as it's an acoustic guitar and organ instrumental version of "Angel Dream," now called "French Disconnection." While there's no major new tracks on this reimagined album, it's probably now a more cohesive and digestable listen than the lengthier and scattered She's The One.