Hynde and Chambers hired new hands and roared back with 1984’s Learning to Crawl, another instant classic and perhaps the best album ever made about trying to strike a balance between motherhood and artistry, toughness and vulnerability, love and hate. After a dissipated and disappointing sophomore effort, Farndon departed from the band and then from life itself, and Honeyman-Scott succumbed to a similar fate less than a year later. With Martin Chambers tenderizing the drum kit and bassist Pete Farndon and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott firing off hooks aplenty, the entire debut rushed along at a blistering pace that seemed impossible to sustain. From “Tattooed Love Boys” to “The Wait,” Hynde’s early songs were brash autobiographical vignettes that celebrated being a woman in a business where women had no business. But she was a punk with classic pop credentials, a songwriter of lapidary brilliance who turned out polished gems–“Precious” and otherwise–that combined driving rhythms, irresistible melodies, and a sophisticated understanding of sexual dynamics. All low black bangs and vulpine leanness, Hynde had plenty of the punk in her, copping fuck-off moves from both sides of the gender fence, extending both Patti Smith and David Johanssen. The bands that opened the door punk slammed shut were faster, smarter, and tougher than their bloated predecessors–velociraptors running over brontosaurs and stegosaurs–and the Pretenders, led by American expatriate Chrissie Hynde, were the fastest, smartest, and toughest of them all. If punk was the asteroid that snuffed the dinosaurs of 70s rock, new wave was the breed that evolved in the aftermath. (It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.Get your UnGala tickets: A museum takeover and art party celebrating the Reader's 50ish anniversary Close “Night in My Veins” live on Letterman, 1994Ī filterable, searchable & sortable somewhat up to date database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written. But when they finally did, it would their best album in a very long time. But at least I knew that I couldn’t count Chrissie Hynde out yet, even though it would be another five years before Pretenders released a new album. With Seymour alternately jangling it up, crunching it out and providing a weirdly disjointed solo in the middle, “Night in My Veins” hit enough pleasure points that if I squinted (and ignored the extraneous synth parts), it almost felt like old times.Īlmost. Love’s language reads the same anywhere, yeah We might as well be on a beach under the moonlight He’s got me up against the back of a pick-up truck More up my alley was “Night in My Veins,” a good old-fashioned Chrissie Hynde fucksong. That said, 1994’s Last of the Independents was a definite improvement, featuring the return of Martin Chambers and the installment of Adam Seymour as her permanent lead guitarist, a slot where he lasted longer than Robbie McIntosh and James Honeyman-Scott combined And while “I’ll Stand by You” was always a skosh over the top for me, at least I could hear why people loved it so much. Martin Chambers exited before 1986’s Get Close, and I seem to remember sitting on the floor at Cindy’s apartment listening to it and not finding any connection to it whatsoever, though “Don’t Get Me Wrong” was a pretty OK - if overproduced - single.Īnd I pretty much ignored 1990’s Packed!, filled as it was with session musicians - none of them named “Johnny Marr,” who had enlivened their set opening for U2 a couple of years previously - though “Sense of Purpose” was a pretty decent song. In between, though, was a pretty dour period. And so it was another decade before Chrissie Hynde released another song I liked as much as her classic early work.
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