Titling the Pretenders’ twelfth studio album Relentless is absolutely fitting and not just for its tongue-in-cheek cover graphic. The name of the record is fully in keeping with the feisty persona bandleader/founder Chrissie Hynde soundly established with her group’s first two LPs and has gone on to hone for a half-century with shifting lineups of personnel.
Imaginative group endeavors like 1994’s Last of the Independents (a live recording of reimagined selections from the Pretenders’ discography) have been interwoven with Hynde’s solo efforts during that time, the most recent of which, Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan, was one of the outstanding albums of 2021.
Through the course of all the varied recordings (as well as her 2015 autobiography Reckless: My Life as a Pretender), Hynde’s been decidedly unpretentious and self-deprecating, perhaps to a fault. Therefore, she probably wouldn’t deem poetry in a song like this caustic opener “Losing My Sense of Taste.” Yet the multiple interpretations the words accommodate, combined with the cacophonous backing, won’t allow a single definitive reading.
Such ambiguity is in keeping with the bandleader’s own ambivalence and it’s a direct contrast to the assertive guitar chording of co-author James Walbourne on “A Love.” That sumptuous chiming, in fact, recalls nothing so much as multiple selections from the first two Pretenders LPs of the late Seventies like “Kid” or “Talk of the Town.” As does the foursquare drumming of Kris Sonne in tandem with bassist Chris Hill’s pointed playing on “Domestic Silence.”
Wisely recording Relentless with a stable corps of musicians, Chrissie Hynde reiterates her faith in the fundamental resources of a rock and roll band. And that’s in addition to her steadfast belief in the power of the music itself: her unfettered loyalty to the form not only transcends truisms but renders moot any cliches, even as the woman’s devotion takes the form of the gentle likes of “The Copa.”
The delicate sonority of Hynde’s vocal delivery finds complement in background harmonies from Walbourne and Sonne plus the soft pop of percussion in producer David Wrench’s bongos. In the arrangements of Relentless, small touches such as the latter (and Walbourne’s mellotron) are virtually the only concessions to additional ornamentation above and beyond the core ensemble’s musicianship.
But that’s in keeping with the plain-spoken candor Chrissie Hynde voices in “Merry Widow,” at least before twisting turning guitars and the keyboards by Carwin Ellis comprise a coda redolent with strains of Indian music. The precise acoustic picking of “Look Away” wouldn’t carry such quiet force either, if not for its juxtaposition with the arch optimism of “Let The Sun Come In:” structural conventions of pop-rock in full glory permeate that cut.
The slight quaver in Hynde’s voice on the former is a corollary to the full-throated abandon in her singing on the latter. As a measure of stability in her descriptions of the tumult of “Your House Is On Fire,” she finds a stable middle ground in which to assume a psychic position that serves the purpose of this song (as with so many others of the twelve): hers are observations only, hardly snap judgments or least of all, patent overthinking.
“Just let it go!” Chrissie Hynde sings at the homestretch of Relentless. But that accepting attitude’s diametrically opposed to her haunting vocal, not to mention the abrasive guitar and doom-laden beat: here, in just a matter of seconds, the Pretenders resolve their own paradox(es), a process they reconfigure and repeat throughout this fifty-odd minutes of playing time.
In that context, the rush of familiar sonic elements in “Vainglorious” stands as a touchpoint of deceptively individual style. And it’s one especially effective as it precedes the healthily sentimental nostalgia “I Think About You Daily” that closes the LP. Such muted but emphatic punctuation, adorned with taut orchestration, comes in the form of frank self-awareness that’s always been Chrissie Hynde’s stock-in-trade.
A balance of material, performance, and production mirrors the bandleader’s emotional equanimity in such sublime fashion, Relentless is as close to perfect as any long-player out this year.
One Response
Article is already suspect from the inaccurate first sentence. ISLE OF VIEW is the live recording of re-imagined Pretenders classics, not LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS.