The whole shebang has been curated by Hynde herself.
The albums have been repackaged now, remixed by original producer Chris Thomas, and come accompanied by a clutch of demos, rarities and live performances, many of them previously unreleased there are photographs and elegant liner notes. The intertwining of Hynde’s voice and James Honeyman-Scott’s distinctive “jingle-jangle” guitar (as Johnny Marr once described it) on “The English Roses” manages to sound both familiar and fresh the prickling reggae, strange incantation and unexpected guitar burst of “Private Life” feels newly provocative. But these records, you are reminded, are entire bodies of work, rather than mere scaffolding for chart hits: the articulation of a lyrical and musical vision, the manifestation of months of hard work, rehearsing long hours, seven days a week.Īs a result, the album tracks are just as striking as their more well-known compatriots in fact, undimmed by years of radio play, they still hold an unexpected brightness. There are the blazing singles, of course –the cover of The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing” that kickstarted their career in 1979, the spiny guitar and plaintive vocal of “Kid”, the gummy, cocksure twang of “Brass In Pocket”. Listen to the Pretenders’ first two records today, over 40 years since their release, and that coursing urgency is still startling.
As they took to the stage they would play Wagner’s “Ride Of The Valkyries”, then widely known for scoring a pivotal sequence in Apocalypse Now: the sound of helicopters, menace, pursuit. In her 2015 memoir, Reckless, Chrissie Hynde described the pre-show ritual in the early days of her band, the Pretenders: the four of them, backstage, waiting, “like dogs at the gate”.
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