Pretenders

With two key members OD'ing, it looked like the Pretenders were finished. Instead, Chrissie Hynde and the band came back with its best-selling -- and finest -- album. Once again, FM rock, New Wave and punk fans came together for an LP loaded with too many classics tracks to mention. Hell, we can't help ourselves: how great is "Back on the Chain Gang"?

This is an album about life and death and love and transcendence–subjects not much
discussed on the brave new dance floor these days–and for Chrissie Hynde and her
battered band, it is a triumph of art over adversity. To say that Learning to Crawl reconfirms
Hynde as the most forceful female presence in rock already demeans her achievement:
The matter of gender aside, she is the most unaffectedly personal of contempor... More >

"I'm not the kind I used to be/I've got a kid, I'm thirty-three" is certainly a quotable quote, and whether rock-and-rolling her baby or growling at fat cats Chrissie Hynde backs it up. It's as if two deaths in the family plus her fruitful union with Ray Davies have convinced her beyond any lingering adolescent doubt that other people are there; Chrissie the f*ck-off queen always had these humanistic attitudes in her, and it's good to hear her make the thin line between love and hate explicit. Unfortunately, they're still only attitudes, which is to say that like her mate she hasn't thought them through all that much, and as a result the impressive songcraft here doesn't bear hard scrutiny. But since unlike her mate she keeps her nostalgia under control, she gets her comeback anyway. (Grade - A-)