Benmont Tench, “The Melancholy Season.”

A case could be made that the world has become much more terrible since Tom Petty died in 2017. It’s also hard to believe we’re closing in on a decade since the legendary singer-songwriter’s passing. Life goes on. For Benmont Tench, the keyboardist in Petty’s Heartbreakers, that means releasing a solo album, his first since the passing of his friend.

Unlike Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, whose voice sounds eerily like Petty, Tench’s vocals sound more like a distinguished gentleman at a piano bar. In fact, listeners may spend several minutes at the beginning of the album searching for any resonance with his Heartbreakers work.

But if you’re paying attention, there’s a moment in the second song, “Pledge,” when you can hear the familiar melodic sensibilities found on any number of Petty albums.

While the vibe might stray toward the jazzier end of the spectrum on songs like “Not Enough,” the straight-ahead rock and roll of “Rattle” positions the album pretty squarely in Heartbreakers’ territory. “If She Knew” pairs piano lounge jazz with the wholesome simplicity of a Petty story song. “If she knew how much I love her/ It wouldn’t change a thing/ She would reel against her demons still/ But a fella’s gotta dream,” Tench sings over delicate piano.

The homespun simplicity of Tench’s words, paired with the drama of the narrative, place us deep in the Petty tradition.

“Adjusting to the fading light/ My eyes dilate and hollow/ You sit outlined in falling night/ So still against the shadows/ The constellations rise and spin/ The planets start their courses/ Orion’s on the threshold now/ The melancholy season is upon us,” Tench sings on the album’s opening title track.

The pairing of intense human experience with comparisons from nature and the cosmos suggest Tench learned something from Petty, or Tench’s vibe filtered into his old boss’ music.

On “Wobbles,” Tench again pairs human drama with pastorale imagery. “As the night leaves the Quarter/ And the dawn’s light kisses the river/ That’s the time when I first saw her/ My darlin/ She was wobblin’/ Down Esplanade,” he sings. If you replaced the track’s jazzy drumming with a solid backbeat and the mournful piano with some overdriven guitar,  you’d have a Tom Petty tune.

But Petty is gone, and his loss is felt in the song’s mournful tone. In fact, the whole album feels like an end-of-life reflection, a looking back and a summing up of a life lived. But maybe that’s just the way pianos sound to me these days.

The Melancholy Season was produced by Jonathan Wilson who’s worked with Father John Misty, Margo Price and Billy Strings. There’s no shortage of beautiful tones on the album, along with performances from Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, singer-songwriter Jenny O. and Sebastian Steinberg, who’s worked with Fiona Apple, Iron and Wine and Soul Coughing, among others.

The album reminds me of early Petty hit”You Got Lucky,” which, with the genius of a great poet, reminds us that “good love is hard to find.”

So are musical heroes.