Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch

Clearly, chemistry counts and names mean something, as reuniting with Tom Leadon who never played with Tench in the original lineup and drummer Randall Marsh, with Petty himself sliding over the bass effects the sound and attitude of the band, turning the group's belated 2008 debut Mudcrutch into something far looser than any Petty project in recent memory. "Looser" suggests that Mudcrutch rocks hard, following through on the rangy, cheerful raunch of those five tracks on Playback, but this album doesn't rock, not really. Mudcrutch rambles and rolls, sometimes stretching out for upwards of 10 minutes, sometimes stopping off for a circular circus instrumental, but it never quite ramps up the rock roll, never locks into a thick swamp groove that brings them back to their southern roots. This is thoroughly a Californian album, all sunbleached riffs and mellow grooves, so unhurried that it never breaks a sweat, more interested in the journey than the destination. More specifically, Mudcrutch is an uncanny evocation of latterday Byrds, after Gram Parsons left for the Flying Burrito Brothers and Roger McGuinn brought in Clarence White for the winding jams of Untitled a connection Mudcrutch makes explicit via a cover of that album's "Lover of the Bayou," which is paired with the Burritos' version of the Red Simpson anthem "Six Days on the Road." Although it has a quicker pulse than most of the 14 tracks here, Mudcrutch's version of "Six Days on the Road" lacks the zippy Bakersfield drive of the Burritos version, as everything the band does is very, very laidback, a sensibility these five guys absorbed years ago when the Byrds were still releasing new records. The remarkable thing about Mudcrutch is that it sounds like it could have been released in '70 or '71, with the obligatory Hurricane Katrina song "Orphan of the Storm" being the only concession to modern times (and even that departs only in topic, not sound).