When you look back through Tom Petty’s catalog, the thing that strikes you is its consistency, not just in quality, but also in terms of the overall sound of each record. There aren’t any Kraftwerk-inspired records or forays into house music or opera or anything like that. Petty took elements of British Invasion, 60’s folk rock, garage rock, and Dylanesque singer-songwriter stuff and came out with a sound that was better for all of those influences without being derivative of any one.

Reuniting his pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch for an album seemed like an indication that Petty was going to explore the roads that he might have taken had the Heartbreakers not turned out to be the method of delivery for his songs. Keep in mind that his new/old band is not just four guys that have been selling cars for the last thirty years. Lifetime Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench are in Mudcrutch as well. Guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh return to the fold after years spent out of the spotlight but still being involved in music.

The first single, “Scare Easy”, isn’t much of a departure; while solid, it could easily be called “I Won’t Back Down 2.0”. Elsewhere Petty delivers excellent songs, like “The Wrong Thing To Do” and “Bootleg Flier” that don’t deviate much from the Heartbreaker template. He’s also more democratic here, as both Leadon and Tench get solo songwriting and singing credits. Their efforts predictably don’t reach Petty’s standards, but they aren’t embarrassing either.

The band truly feels like their own entity on a crunching cover version of the The Byrds “Lover Of The Bayou”, which thunders dramatically a la Hendrix’ version of “All Along The Watchtower”. Many songs get a lot more instrumental breathing room than the Heartbreakers’ stuff ever does, although this isn’t always a positive. “Crystal River” meanders for over 9 minutes and sounds like a weird cross between Neil Young and The Doors.

The most exciting parts of the album by far come when Petty goes down new avenues as a songwriter and manages to transcend the influences he’s invoking. “Orphan Of The Storm” clearly owes a musical debt to the inimitable Gram Parsons, but Petty’s lyrics about a woman displaced by Katrina and forced back into a hard life she thought she’d left behind bring the song into the here and now by adding a personal angle to a tragedy often talked about only in broad strokes. And the album closer, “House Of Stone”, might amble along like American Beauty-era Grateful Dead, but Petty’s tale about a ne’er-do-well trying to win over a respectable woman adds Wilbury humor to the mix (“The deacons in her church say to leave me alone/ They say my brain is in the twilight zone”).

It’s hard to say if Mudcrutch will ever be a more than an interesting one-off. But, if it opens up some new songwriting worlds for Petty to explore, then the band will finally have made its mark on the rock and roll world and be more than just the road Petty never got the chance to take.