Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Nearly Done With New Album

Thus far it’s been a quiet year for Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, but that will soon change according to an interview Petty gave to David Fricke of Rolling Stone. Not only does the group expect to release a new studio album, Hypnotic Eye, this summer, but they are also planning to tour behind the release. As if that’s not enough, the new interview mentions a re-issue of 1994’s Wildflowers and a live album that’s in the works.

[Photo by Adam McCullough]

Let’s start with the studio album: Hypnotic Eye is tentatively set to be released this summer via Reprise Records. The LP was co-produced by Petty, Mike Campbell and Ryan Ulyate and has been in production since 2011. Fricke, the first person to hear Hypnotic Eye outside the Petty inner circle, calls it “Petty’s decisive return to the concise Sixties-rock classicism and drive of his first great New Wave-era albums, 1976’s Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and 1978’s You’re Gonna Get It.” Tom also tells Fricke the Heartbreakers will return to the road later this year to support the new album.

Petty also reveals that a two-disc reissue of 1994’s Wildflowers LP, which includes 10 previously unreleased songs, may be out in time for Christmas. He also mentions a live album “is hanging around” from the band’s 2013 theater residencies in Los Angeles and New York City. We await more word on all of these exciting projects.