THE PRETENDERS
Break Up the Concrete
(Shangri La-2008)
We can remember exactly the time and place when we first heard The Pretenders: listening to the radio, summer of 1980, reeled in by an enchanting female voice singing an inescapable rock ballad we later found out was called "Brass in Pocket." And so, began an almost 30-year love affair. To this day, the classic self-titled debut--one of the greatest initial bows in the annals of rock music--and its better than average follow-up, Pretenders II (Sire-1981) are not just beloved pieces of our music collection, but an identifiable part of our musical DNA.
After original members guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon died within months of each other in 1982-83, it was never the same in more ways than the obvious. Vocalist/guitarist Chrissie Hynde and powerhouse drummer Martin Chambers soldiered on, releasing soon after the "Back on the Chain Gang" single, which later happened to carry some personal significance, as it was a big fave of a friend of ours who passed away shortly thereafter. We stuck around for the Learning to Crawl (Sire-1984) and Get Close! (Sire-1986) albums but as the band increasingly became The Chrissie Hynde Experience, backed by a a small army of studio musicians--Chambers, the last remaining original Pretender, was gone by this point--we progressively lost interest.
Following Hynde and co. from a distance we caught a whiff of a bunch of substandard releases with the occasional OK song and never regretted having mostly turned our backs on what was once was a great band and had become an empty trademark; the shingle Hynde hung outside her place of business. (The 1993-2006 lineup of Hynde, guitarist Adam Seymour, bassist Andy Hobson, and a returning Martin Chambers, was the best they'd had since the original one, though.)
Since every album since Learning to Crawl has been hailed as a return to form, we greeted the release of Break Up the Concrete with the same skepticism we've mustered for the last 20 years. But lo and behold, it doesn't suck. It's actually pretty good. What it's not is a return to form per se. You see, Hynde's best album in a while is more of a roots/rockabilly record. And yes, we purposely meant hers--The Pretenders have not been a band since Farndon and Honeyman-Scott were in the ranks. (We'll never know what the band could've been had they remained on board, but at least we have 2 great albums to remember what a kick-ass band they once were.)
Some have called this Hynde's most mature record--and not in a pejorative sense. It's the sound of someone who still has plenty of fire in the belly but has invested that energy in making an album that nods heavily to the past. Not her band's but perhaps that of her youth. (She has recently moved back to her native Ohio and is living in the US for the first time in decades.) Yes, that cool chick with the unforgettable black eyeliner is pushing 60 and is going a more age-appropriate route with her songwriting. Nothing wrong with that, especially if it's good stuff. Certainly, we won't begrudge her sounding her age and making a tasteful Americana influenced album, but we already have Lucinda Williams and others holding down that end already. What we lack is the sassy, in-your-face, hard-rockin' magic heard on those 2 aforementioned initial discs almost 30 years ago. (It's telling that Martin Chambers chose to sit this one out and let legendary studio drummer Jim Keltner take over the recording of the album and rejoin the band on the road.)
Oh, well...
