The Pretenders unveiled new tracks and played favorites for a few hundred fans—including Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook—at a recent in-store performance at Los Angeles’ Amoeba Records. Building up goodwill for Break Up the Concrete the first Pretenders album in five years, the band performed various tracks from it, including “The Nothing Maker”, “Boots of Chinese Plastic”, and “Don’t Cut Your Hair”. We have yet to hear the record, but we’re being extremely cautious with this one.
Sorry, but after they kicked ours and millions of other asses with the one-two punch of Pretenders (Sire-1980) and Pretenders II (Sire-1981), it’s just been hugely disappointing to follow Chrissie and the boys. Granted, Learning to Crawl (Sire-1984) had a couple of good tracks and so did Get Close (Sire-1986) but, really?
Break Up the Concrete will be released October 7th on Shangri-La Records.
