We held the regular periodic poker game at our place last night. I lost seven bucks overall, but on the plus side, one of the guys brought this over for a spin:

It's a wonderful recording in that it seems not to want to please anyone but the musicians themselves. Petty has shown contempt for the music industry in his previous writing, and it's been o.k., but now he's treating it as simply irrelevant, and the results are even better. There's mostly blues in here, and even a Dead-like jam vibe at one point, to go with some classic sweet Beatlesque Heartbreakers noise and a ballad or two. It's all new original material written by Petty. Very grown up and interesting, but eminently listenable, it would make a nice Christmas gift for the geezer guy on your list -- if he hasn't already run out and bought it on CD himself.