Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers – Long After Dark

To me, this is the last of the great classic-era TP/HBs albums (arguably, Southern Accents should be included) with Iovine/Yakus on board. Not quite as solid as the two previous records, but at least half of the tunes are upper-crust. Not a clunker to be heard. "Straight Into Darkness" and "A Wasted Life" are deep classics, often overlooked.

Great album, sound is crisp and full. Not one of my favorite Heartbreakers albums, but still great. I didn’t the 180g copy and this sounds just as good

On this their fifth album, it still feels as if Tom and The Heartbreakers are struggling to not only stay afloat, but to define themselves, where with their delivery of comfort food rock n’ roll, they’ve still not found that worldwide embrace.

I wasn’t the only one to feel this way back in 1982, with Rolling Stone saying, ”No single thing about Long after Dark is startlingly great.” Still, if I were pressed, I’d have to say that this is their most defining album, an album that could easily be compared to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. With that in mind, again Tom filters out a few bits and pieces of a very private personality, yet in the end, perhaps listeners know less about Petty than they did before listening to this release, where Tom uses the power of his guitar to both shield himself and to lose himself within those driven notes.

The standout classics here are “You Got Lucky” and “Straight Into Darkness,” both rockers, yet delivered as uptempo ballads of sorts, easily transferred to an acoustic guitar, where the meaning, like Springsteen’s “State Trooper” or his dark acoustic version of “Born In The USA” with both taking on an air of haunting mystery. Of course everyone knows the backstory of the Heartbreakers moving to breezy sunny California, yet still, this many years into Petty’s career, and I’m more sure than ever that there’s something lurking in his closet, something that he’s attempting to outrun, though the more effort he puts into placing distance between him and that demon, the more present it appears.

Yes, by this time the band had certainly strung together a series of relentless hits, and that’s the point, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were chalking up hit after hit, yet they had still not created that single defining album around which they and fans could coalesce and move forward. Still, Long After Dark sent The Heartbreakers back into the Top 10 again, where Petty sounds sincere while playing the music he wants to, with if nothing else, a consistent quality. But, and there’s always a ‘but’, even while firing on all cylinders and touting his roots rock dialectic, with basic minor blues patterns along with lyrical verses suited for guitar riffs and bends, his persistent use of the synthesizer nearly removes the living soul for many of his numbers, locking them into a very specific loathsome time and place, where even as I quickly outgrew the Cars, Petty and his merry band come off sounding very much the same.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers have always managed to teeter over the edge and then be saved from obscurity at the last instant. When I heard their first album I was rocked back, seemingly assured that this group who rose up in the era of New Wave, would step out and be a major force of reckoning, perhaps even saving rock’s mortal soul, though here and in the entire career of The Heartbreakers, they have never managed to deliver that single defining album that I could hold up to the world and say ”See, this is the next step in rock’s evolution.” So again, I have to suggest that this was nothing more than a singles band and that they will never be any more than that. And that concept isn’t a bad thing, as I’ve got nearly thirty top flight songs riding with comfort in my back pocket, songs that will delight and challenge me for the rest of my life … and still, after all these years, I long for Petty’s own The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle album.

Review by Jenell Kesler

There is a South African version of this LP released in 1982 not listed here. Backstreet Records ML 4647. Great sounding pressing. Completely different track order to that shown above. Printed inner sleeve shows the above track order though.

Straight Into Darkness is Tom Petty's best song ever just saying.