477. Pretenders - Pretenders (1980)
















Track Listing

1. Precious
2. Phone Call
3. Up The Neck
4. Tattooed Love Boys
5. Space Invader
6. Wait
7. Stop Your Sobbing
8. Kid
9. Private Life
10. Brass In Pocket
11. Lovers Of Today
12. Mystery Achievement


Review

I quite like the Pretenders, although I am not a particular fan of Chrissie Hynde and her PETA crap, this was all before that time and she was good at music making. Well she was a big percentage of the talent in the band and it really is her voice which carries this album.

And it carries the album pretty well and so do her lyrics and particularly the delivery of said lyrics. For example when she says "fuck off" in the first track it is blurted out with a certain kind of rage that makes it almost seem like she has Tourette's.

When you look at the credits for the tracks they are almost all credited solely to Hynde with the exception of four tracks, one of which is a cover of a Kinks song. There is a kind of really great energy which makes the album stand out at this time, this is post-punk almost harking back to the early days of CBGB's and that was a fun time, so props to her!

Track Highlights

1. Precious
2. The Wait
3. Tatooed Love Boys
4. Brass In Pocket

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Pretenders has been named one of the best albums of all time by VH1 (#52). In 2003, the album was ranked number 155 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 1989, the same magazine ranked it the 20th best album of the 1980s.

The song "Tattooed Love Boys" is featured as a playable track in the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 music video game Guitar Hero II, in the String Snappers (PlayStation 2) and Return of the Shred (Xbox 360) tiers. The instrumental "Space Invader" contains sound effects from the video game Space Invaders.

Brass In Pocket: