![]() Hynde’s frame of reference is the rock of decades long gone, so her relevance to a new audience is impossible to gauge. Her response to this has been mulish blindness. (Hynde was the first person I heard singing the word “fuck.”) Her voice as a songwriter is skeptical and romantic, and has a mutability granted more often to men than to women. On the Pretenders’ immaculate self-titled début, from 1980, Hynde seems stony and passionate, as unapologetic as any man, more profane than most. No matter how loud or odd the backing music, the songs move briskly, giving most of the room to words that are too informal to sound like poetry and too doubting to sound like anybody’s teen-age dream. Her great songs-and there are dozens of them-are of a piece with the work of Ray Davies and Pete Townshend. Her lack of interest in changing the rules of the genre became a focus on taking the lead role. She grew up loving the Kinks and the Who and followed in their wake. Hynde has maintained a convincing rock-and-roll sneer for almost forty years, singing in a hard alto that vibrates in a patented tight waver. In 2014, what would it take for a female veteran to be accorded the same reverence as Young? As with current pop stars such as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga-who sound nothing like Hynde, a staunch rock traditionalist-the path to being viewed as a songwriter and a producer of one’s own work is long and obscure. Hynde, like many female artists over the age of thirty, is most often discussed as a vocalist and a personality. Seated, playing acoustic guitar and singing, Hynde performed some songs from “Stockholm.” Hynde’s career arc has not been exactly the same as that of her friend Neil Young, who plays guitar on her new song “Down the Wrong Way.” Young is able to look as if he were squatting in a yurt in a community garden and still be considered on the basis of his work. When Hynde appeared in the small venue at the back of the Rough Trade record store, in Williamsburg, in early June, fewer than a hundred people were assembled. The farther a rocker gets from this adolescent ideal, the less pertinent she becomes. Pop music deifies the teen-age experience-especially physical beauty that needs no maintenance and can withstand the high life. But the situation for a sixty-two-year-old songwriting woman is not sanguine. It was a marginal effort compared with the band’s previous one, “Loose Screw” (2002), a strong collection that should have made Hynde something-more famous, more respected. The last Pretenders album, “Break Up the Concrete,” came out in 2008. A younger listener would be forgiven for not knowing Hynde, or how she does business. The connection was suggested by Hynde’s publishing company, “a kind of old-fashioned way of doing it,” she told me. Though her best-known work is credited to the Pretenders, an act that was formed in 1978, in London, her new album was written and recorded with the Swedish musician Björn Yttling-a member of Peter Bjorn and John, and a producer for Lykke Li. A native of Akron, who has lived in England for more than forty years, she just released the excellent “Stockholm,” the first full-length album to be credited to her alone. In another world, the movements of a musician like Chrissie Hynde would be closely tracked and regularly celebrated. ![]() ![]() Photograph by Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello The album would reach the top spot of UK charts and go on to be certified Platinum in the US.Hynde’s best songs are of a piece with the work of Ray Davies and Pete Townshend. ![]() In fact, Hynde inspired Manson to learn guitar. I hear Shirley Manson in Chrissie Hynde too. Throughout the album I hear shades of No Doubt, a band surely influenced by them. The Pretenders would go on to influence so many musicians, yet another band to break down barriers for women in music. The highlight of the record comes in the form of ‘Brass In Pocket,’ the band’s breakthrough single and first #1 single. ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ is the first poppy sounding song on the record, a cover of The Kinks song, an immediate standout and the first single off of the album, followed by ‘Kid,’ another single and departure from the punk sound of earlier in the record. Things change significantly on the track ‘Space Invaders,’ an instrumental song that’s been used in multiple movies and TV shows. “I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for.” There’s no stopping Hynde. They slow it down marginally on ‘Up The Neck’ but bring the pace up again on ‘Tattooed Love Boys,’ a song that’s New Wave meets Punk. Loud guitars and Chrissie Hynde’s commanding presence. I knew The Pretenders for their radio hits, and so to hear the record open with the Punk song, ‘Precious’ is a shock to the system (in the best possible way) “But not me, baby, I'm too precious/Fuck off!” That’s set the tone! Next track, ‘The Phone Call’ follows a similar vibe. Last time I remember being surprised at this record.
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