Various ★★★
Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration Of Tom Petty
BIG MACHINE. CD/DL/LP
Country artists cover 20 Tom Petty songs.
Tribute LPs can be a mixed bag: a reminder of what great songs the subject of their homage wrote, but also of how perfect they sounded sung and played by that artist, in this case Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers. There’s quite a variety of country musicians here. Most tend to play their selection pretty straight, though Rhiannon Giddens has an interesting take on Don’t Come Around Here No More. As for all the additional banjos, fiddles, mandolins and steel, given Petty’s deep roots in country they don’t sound particularly out of place – though the flailing banjo intro to Dierks Bentley’s version of American Girl is a bit of a shock. It’s the old school who provide this collection’s highlights: Marty Stuart (I Need To Know); Steve Earle (Yer So Bad); and Willie and Lukas Nelson (Angel Dream #2), with top prize going to Dolly Parton’s Southern Accents, a tour de force.