The Pretenders

The Pretenders-Learning To Crawl-REMASTERED-24BIT-96KHZ-WEB-FLAC-2018-OBZEN
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:40:43 minutes | 942 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover

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The Pretenders – Pretenders II (Deluxe Edition) (1980/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:50:52 minutes | 3,80 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © WM UK

The Pretenders’ debut album was such a powerful, monumental record that its sequel was bound to be a bit of a disappointment, and Pretenders II is. Essentially, this album is an unabashed sequel, offering more of the same sound, attitude, and swagger, including titles that seem like rips on their predecessors and another Ray Davies cover. This gives the record a bit too much of a pat feeling, especially since the band seems to have a lost a bit of momentum – they don’t rock as hard, Chrissie Hynde’s songwriting isn’t as consistent, James Honeyman-Scott isn’t as inventive or clever. These all are disappointments, yet this first incarnation of the Pretenders was a tremendous band, and even if they offer diminished returns, it’s still diminished returns on good material, and much of…

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The Pretenders – Pretenders II (1981/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 46:31 minutes | 1,79 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino

The Pretenders’ debut album was such a powerful, monumental record that its sequel was bound to be a bit of a disappointment, and Pretenders II is. Essentially, this album is an unabashed sequel, offering more of the same sound, attitude, and swagger, including titles that seem like rips on their predecessors and another Ray Davies cover. This gives the record a bit too much of a pat feeling, especially since the band seems to have a lost a bit of momentum — they don’t rock as hard, Chrissie Hynde’s songwriting isn’t as consistent, James Honeyman-Scott isn’t as inventive or clever. These all are disappointments, yet this first incarnation of The Pretenders was a tremendous band, and even if they offer diminished returns, it’s still diminished returns on good material, and much of Pretenders II is quite enjoyable. Yes, it’s a little slicker and more stylized than its predecessor, and, yes, there’s a little bit of filler, yet any album where rockers as tough as “Message of Love” and “The Adultress” are balanced by a pop tune as lovely as “Talk of the Town” is hard to resist. And when you realize that this fantastic band only recorded two albums, you take that second album, warts and all, because the teaming of Hynde and Honeyman-Scott was one of the great pairs, and it’s utterly thrilling to hear them together, even when the material isn’t quite up to the high standards they set the first time around. –Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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The Pretenders – Pretenders (Deluxe Edition) (1980/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:32:17 minutes | 4,38 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © WM UK

Pretenders was first issued in December 1979 and features the singles ‘Stop Your Sobbing’, ‘Kid’ and UK chart-topper ‘Brass in Pocket’. Less than two years later the follow-up Pretenders II was issued. Hits included ‘Talk of the Town’ (issued much earlier in April 1980), ‘Message of Love’ and ‘I Go To Sleep’. Both albums featured the classic line-up of Chrissie Hynde (vocals and guitar), James Honeyman-Scott (guitar), Pete Farndon (bass) and Martin Chambers (drums).

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The Pretenders – Hate for Sale (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 30:29 minutes | 366 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd

“Too old to know better/ too young for her age,” Chrissie Hynde sings, flashing by a mirror in the slow soul music sway of “You Can’t Hurt a Fool” from Hate For Sale. There’s much truth in the notion that since the deaths of original guitarist Pete Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott who OD’d less than a year apart between 1982-83, The Pretenders have been a Hynde solo project with varying degrees of success. The band’s last record, 2016’s Alone, produced by Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, and featuring the musicians from his band The Arcs emphasized that point. Now under the steady hand of producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Cranberries, Blur), Hynde and her touring band of 15 years have hatched an album that will especially resonate with fans of the band’s early work. With original drummer Martin Chambers aboard, this also feels and sounds like the first true “band” album in a very long time—a throwback move where Hynde, still in good voice, again sounds emotionally engaged. Energized by a solid batch of co-writes between Hynde and touring guitarist James Walbourne, Hate for Sale opens with the snarling title track that both savages an ex-lover, and according to Hynde, serves as a tribute to punk outfit The Damned, whose members she once jammed with just before they became a band. Single “The Buzz,” an immediately recognizable return to a vintage Pretenders sound, has changes and rhythms similar to “Kid” from the band’s 1980 eponymous debut album. The reasonably credible reggae of “Lightning Man” is another tribute, this time to Richard Swift, a chief mover behind Alone. And a revved up rockabillyized Bo Diddley beat gives “Didn’t Want to Be This Lonely” a spirited snap. Forty years on, Chrissie’s back with the band. – Robert Baird

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The Pretenders – Get Close (1986/2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 45:03 minutes | 1,65 GB | Genre: Rock, Alternative Rock, New Wave
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © WM UK

In the first edition of the Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde was a smart and streetwise rock & roller with just enough maturity to make something of what life had shown her by her mid-twenties — and she had the rough-and-tumble band to match for her first two albums. The second version of the group cast her as an unwitting but unbowed survivor, determined to move on and keep rocking despite the deaths of two of her bandmates, and the tough, no-nonsense approach of her new collaborators on Learning to Crawl reflected her attitude. Released in 1986, Get Close marked the debut of the Pretenders’ Mark Three, and on this album listeners are introduced to Chrissie Hynde, Mature Professional Musician with a band to match. Get Close is never less than solid as a work of craft, and guitarist Robbie McIntosh, drummer Blair Cunningham, and bassist T.M. Stevens deliver tight and emphatic performances throughout, but they also sound like what they are — journeymen musicians who bring their chops to their projects while leaving their personalities at the door. While Hynde always dominated the Pretenders, by this time it was obvious that this was fully her show, and if she felt less like rocking and more like exploring her emotions and thoughts about parenthood on midtempo pop tunes, no one in the group was going to prod her into doing otherwise; the presence of a large number of additional session players further buffs away any of Get Close’s potential sharp edges. Despite all this, Hynde’s voice is in great form throughout, and when she gets her dander up, she still has plenty to say and good ways to say it; “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?” is a gleefully venomous attack on the musically unscrupulous; “Don’t Get Me Wrong” is a superb pop tune and a deserved hit single; and the Motown-flavored “I Remember You” and the moody “Chill Factor” suggest she’d been learning a lot from her old soul singles. But after three great albums from the Pretenders, Get Close sounded good but not especially striking, and its hit-and-miss approach, with a few great songs surrounded by lesser material, was something Hynde’s fans would find themselves getting used to over the group’s next few releases. –Mark Deming

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The Pretenders – Relentless (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 49:03 minutes | 554 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Parlophone UK

On her twelfth album with the Pretenders—truly her band, as not even drummer Martin Chambers returns for this one—Chrissie Hynde is aware of her age but not necessarily feeling it. There are no idle hands or thoughts of retirement on “Let the Sun Come,” with its Peter Buck-sounding guitar. “We don’t have to get fat, we don’t have to get old/ We don’t have information that we have to withhold … we don’t have to fade to black/ Let the sun come in,” the 71-year-old legend sings. But that’s not to say she’s stayed in the same place. The production is crunchier, darker than the Windex-clear sounds on the band’s early now-classics like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “Brass in Pocket,” and Hynde is, as she has been for the past decade or so, in a balladeer mood. She sounds like a chanteuse on the torch-song burn of “The Promise of Love,” occasionally breaking through the smoke to soar light and aloft. On “The Copa,” her voice tracks an ancient-sounding Renaissance melody against lovely guitar noodling. She’s not afraid to look back, but it’s rarely with nostalgia. “I Think About You Daily”—featuring a lovely string arrangement by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood—finds Hynde slightly trembling with emotion as she offers an apology to someone she hurt in the past. There are no such regrets on “Just Let It Go,” seemingly about refusing to get comfortable or meet expectations. “What kind of career means a life in a cage?/ One day I could hear a distant bell toll … I let it go/ maybe it’s best to just let it go/ The changes were fast but the torment was slow,” she sings, low and hazy on the verses as wailing guitar sounds like a cry for mercy, then flying on the chorus and supported by drums rumbling like release. “A Love” slightly echoes the energy of oldie “Kid” as Hynde plays it cautious in romance: “I’m not scared of your dark eyes/ They mesmerize and soothe/ But I don’t mess with burning coal/ Or anything I can’t control … I’m not scared of you/ I’m scared of what could be/ Like certain drugs/ One taste and then you’re never free.” Meanwhile, on “Merry Widow,” she rides a gnarled melody to gleefully claim independence, declaring, “He thought love was competitive like sport … so I left him at the port / I’m a divorcee, but I feel like a widow, a merry, merry widow.” The music is a little bit mystery, a little doom-rock shadow and takes a snaking tarantella turn at the end. There are two real rockers here—”Losing My Sense of Taste” and garage banger “Vainglorious”—and Hynde sounds fantastic on both, especially as she delights in repeating the latter’s title over and over, trying on different inflections and emotions like personalities.

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The Pretenders – Relentless (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 00:49:03 minutes | 574 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | ©

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