Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs release new rock album "Mission of Mercy"

Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs released a new album, "Mission of Mercy." Campbell, who fronts the band, co-wrote many of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' biggest hits before forming this post-Heartbreakers group. NPR's Fresh Air reviewed the new record on air, with critic Ken Tucker pairing it with Low Cut Connie's new record "Livin in the USA" in the same segment.

Tucker used the pairing to push back on a narrative he said he'd read a lot lately: that country music has become the true home of rock and roll, or that guitar rock survives only as nostalgia. Hearing new work from Campbell and Low Cut Connie's Adam Weiner, he said, is what keeps reminding him "rock 'n' roll is always alive, always hiding in plain sight."

On "Mission of Mercy" specifically, Tucker said Campbell continues to explore the kind of elemental rock he spent decades making with Petty, doing so "with unabated energy and skill" while carrying what Tucker called an air of "hard-won serenity." The album, he said, avoids leaning on nostalgia even as it draws from the same well Campbell has worked from for most of his career.

Low Cut Connie's companion album got its own close read. Tucker described Adam Weiner, who has fronted the piano-driven rock band for a decade, as pursuing "liberation through controlled chaos, better living through rhythm and blues." He noted that Weiner was among the first musicians to decline to play at the Kennedy Center under the current administration, and suggested a track called "Let Me Speak to Bobby" could be aimed at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., given the political tone running through the rest of the record.

Tucker closed the review by tying both albums back to rock's roots: Weiner has said every song on "Livin in the USA" was "recorded in one hot take," the same blurt-it-out ethos Tucker said the genre was born from. But both Campbell and Weiner know the music runs deeper than instinct alone, he wrote, adding that "the revolution is over, but its passion, complexity and rewards remain as life-altering as ever."