Pretenders: The Pretenders : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The punch line of "Precious," which opens the Pretenders' 1980 debut album, is technically "I had to fuck off," but Chrissie Hynde swallows the first three words before delivering the F-bomb with a fearlessness that few chick singers had managed up till then. Three songs later, on "Tattooed Love Boys," she confesses, with wicked glee, "I shot my mouth off/And you showed me what that hole was for," acknowledging that she's both one of the boys and a woman fully aware of her power over them. Pretenders isn't just sexual provocation, though: On the second half, Hynde reveals her tender side on a series of disarming performances in which romantic and maternal love seem all but interchangeable ("Kid," "Lovers of Today"), as do attitude and vulnerability ("Brass in Pocket").

Hynde wasn't the Pretenders' only force of nature. Guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, a master of tone and time, was her ideal partner. He shunned soloing in favor of an effects-laden, textured approach that locked in with Hynde's feral snarls and tremulous stretched notes. Bassist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers made sure that, even on the slower numbers, Pretenders has an unstoppable, springy momentum. The band cut only one more LP before Honeyman-Scott fatally overdosed, with Farndon following suit less than a year later. But Pretenders stands as a stunning confluence of hooks, sonics and substance -- it's one of those rare albums on which every move turns out to be the right one.