4/5
The Great Pretenders.
"You and me we were the pretenders/we let it all slip away", Springsteen once sang with a 'Human Touch'. And on the 'Relentless' new album from The Pretenders there's a heartbreak that just won't quit you like Jake Gyllenhaal and the late, great Heath Ledger in 'Brokeback Mountain'. All for the band that on their Hynde side in the 80s said 'I'll Stand By You' with Scarlett 'Lost In Translation' pink-wigged 'Brass In (Their) Pocket'. Yet, despite the break, the English/American 'Last Of The Independents' are still fighting like the boxing baby Banksy like graffiti of their album artwork, despite the eye-patch. They still see clearly on an album that makes a dozen and their first since the quarantined 'Hate For Sale' of 2020. Their first album on Parlophone and the 'Relentless' tour like Ben Harper and his band of 7 is spurred on by the first single that 'Let(s) The Sun Come In'.
"A bunch of myths, a bunch of tales/To take the wind out of our sails/They even say that we must die/I don't believe it, that's a lie/To live forever, that's the plan/The longest-living mortal man/With a soul that can't be perished/With a song that's always cherished", the icon Chrissie Hynde sings with angel wings on a track that will be held dear as such. Opening with 'Losing My Sense Of Taste' and feeling with the bittersweet pill of a love lost like, "I must be going through a metamorphosis/senile dementia , or some kind of psychosis/I don't even care about rock and roll." Even though that last line is bulls### as Hynde and the Pretenders haven't lost their signature style like R.E.M. did their religion. Especially on the second single 'A Love' that keeps this queen of hearts dealing. "A love to make the day go by/Like a gentle breeze/A love to make the difficult/Disappear with ease/A love like ones I've read about/Or heard about in song/A love like that might come to me/But never for too long." The wonderful remote writing of Chrissie and guitarist James Walbourne producing some of the best work they've ever written.
Believe me, if you're going through it (hands up), you'll really feel this raw 'Relentless' record. Especially with the violence of the 'Domestic Silence' that threatens to stonewall you with lines, "domestic stuff, that's what we got/I know it don't seem like a lot/But when you pan it out, there's a little bit of gold/Well this is where the story gets old" drawn. At 'The Copa', Chrissie calls it like she sees it. But when 'The Promise Of Love Is Broken' over haunting piano, that's when the vocals soar with "snow on the ground, so cold and so white/your arms did surround my mind that night". Like a 'Last Goodbye' from Alison Mosshart and another English/American act, my friend, this one kills. Just like the 'Merry Widow' haunting a fallen love that sadly won't be home for Christmas. "Love fools and everybody knows it/But not everybody shows it," she eulogizes. "I'm a divorcee, but I feel like a widow", when that person you once held dear is no longer here...and all you're left with is blind-siding grief. It's hard to 'Look Away', or the other way. Especially when 'Your House Is On Fire' with embers "from San Francisco to Sydney, there's no rain". It truly is a crying shame.
Yet it's easier said than done to 'Just Let It Go', even if it is for the best ("maybe"). And it's not 'Vainglorious' to look after yourself, but that very track will rock you to your core as Chrissie sings, "some have sank and some are swimming/The heads in hands and hands on faces/History fails and time erases." But for all the wise words and sharp songwriting for these legacy making lyrics, it's the final curtain where these Pretenders like the Foo Fighters are at their most beautiful. 'I Think About You Daily', Chrissie Hynde devotes on the latest single with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood conducting and composing the strings as she sings, "Time is like a hammer/It comes slow, then comes fast/And things that are too delicate/Are never gonna last/The time you took from me/I never saw it enter/Too distracted by a pretty face/I lost you and my center," over a beautiful ballet of a vivid video. The latest and one of the greatest albums of the Pretenders is no pretence. Not only does this late career surge feel like the good old times, the lyrics are so raw you wonder how amazing an artist like Chrisse Hynde really is. Or how perplexing the pain she has been through has been. We wish as fans we could take it away, but what she gives us instead is solidarity on our own coldest nights. This type of love and life can happen to anyone for better and worse. And even the matrimony of that message can leave us feeling less relentlessly lonely. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Domestic Silence', 'Just Let It Go', 'I Think About You Daily'.
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