RECORDINGS : Quick Spins

Tom Petty, top, turns contemplative in "Highway Companion"; the New York Dolls' album marks their return after a 30-year layoff. (Top, By Jeff Gentner -- Getty Images; Above, By Jeff Fasano)

HIGHWAY COMPANION

Tom Petty

If you've ever wondered what Tom Petty might sound like after reading too much Philip Roth, now is your chance to find out. "Highway Companion," Petty's first solo album in almost 12 years and only his third one ever, is an autumnal rumination on time and mortality that heavily suggests both his solo debut, "Full Moon Fever," and Neil Young's "Harvest Moon," not to mention Roth's recent old-age lament, "Everyman."

Inclined toward un-frilly, unhurried acoustic ballads, "Highway Companion" is that weirdest of hybrids: a pastoral road album. Produced by Petty, fellow Traveling Wilbury Jeff Lynne and Heartbreaker Mike Campbell, it's a streamlined, occasionally bluesy offering that's by turns sublime (the first single, "Saving Grace," and the simple, perfect "Square One") and desultory ("Damaged by Love" and any number of other draggy record-closers).

Throughout, Petty, 55, wanders the globe bemoaning his loneliness, settling accounts and recalling old loves. There are rare flashes of humor (at one point, he threatens to "Create myself down South. . . . / Pretend I'm Samuel Clemens / Wear seersucker and white linens"), but for an artist as legendarily thorny as Petty, "Highway Companion" is inexplicably mild.

With the exception of the semi-rave-up "Big Weekend," there's nothing that approaches the crackling energy of his mid-period work with the Heartbreakers, and as pristine and immaculate and worthy as "Highway Companion" is, it feels sort of wan. It may be his best disc in years (it's certainly better than his recent work with the Heartbreakers), but fans of legendary benchmarks-in-stubbornness like "I Won't Back Down" may be left wondering where Tom Petty's mojo went.

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Saving Grace," "Square One," "Down South"

-- Allison Stewart

ONE DAY IT WILL PLEASE US TO REMEMBER EVEN THIS

New York Dolls

For rockers in their fifties, the hardest thing is not maintaining vigor, it's having anything to say. Ambiguously dressed proto-punks the New York Dolls always did things differently, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that their comeback has a different problem: "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This," the band's first studio release since 1974, features sharp lyrics and dulled music.

That doesn't mean the melodies are flimsy or the riffs feeble; both get the job done. It's just that the current Dolls -- singer David Johansen, guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and four new musicians replacing three deceased predecessors -- lack the originals' precarious but thrilling sense of style.

Reconstituted after a 30-year layoff, the group is remarkably convincing when following its old template. The secular-humanist romp "We're All in Love," a paean to polysexuality, is slicker than the early Dolls, but just as brash and smart. Far weaker is arena-rock fodder like "Dancing on the Lip of a Volcano."

The '70s Dolls played bluesy rock, but also exuberant covers of girl-group and R&B novelties. Several of this album's highlights return to such inspirations: "Dance Like a Monkey," a droll critique of creationism, whoops at the Cadets' "Stranded in the Jungle''; "Rainbow Store," a tale of encountering that special woman while shopping for women's clothes, pecks the cheek of the Shangri-Las' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss." The latest edition is tamer than the first, but when Johansen offers back-to-back tributes to Schopenhauer and the Shangri-Las, the Dolls spirit is still alive.

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Dance Like a Monkey," "We're All in Love"

-- Mark Jenkins