PRETENDERS
The Old Market, Hove, May 12 Chrissie’s crew live up to the title of their new album
Hynde’s singing is steady and clear, the atmosphere smoky
“I-I-I-I-I’M one of those faces”, Chrissie Hynde sings on “Domestic Silence”, from the Pretenders’ imminent 12th album, Relentless. She holds a pose for a second and there is that face, as chiselled and changeless as Mount Rushmore: dark hair sprouting like ’70s Keith, straight fringe hanging over makeup-hooded eyes, razor cheekbones and mouth at a challenging tilt.
Hynde takes Relentless’s title to mean “showing no abatement of intensity”, and this 50-minute hit-and-run set at Brighton’s The Great Escape festival digs deep into the band’s catalogue, demonstrating a consistent purpose and attitude forged by Hynde’s character, and embodied by her voice’s cocky thrust and vulnerable ache.
This is the start of the Pretenders’ second run of club-sized gigs in 2023, allowing for more open-ended sets, and they open with a brace from Relentless. Hynde’s current right-hand man and co-writer James Walbourne conjures fuzzy stormclouds of punk guitar on “Losing My Sense Of Taste”. They slow down for “A Love”, Hynde’s latest account of an addictive, doomed a air. “I’m scared of taking stock”,
she admits. “I’m not scared of your dark eyes”. “The Adultress” reaches back to
Pretenders II for a sultrier confession, Hynde’s chanteuse poise shredded by staccato chimes. Hynde grins as her and Walbourne’s guitars just about make a hairpin curve together before the snappy, “You Really Got Me”-quoting coda.
On “Downtown (Akron)”, she rattles out lines about a hot day in her hometown with screwball speed and noir steaminess, her voice playing o Walbourne’s now o and guitar. “The Buzz”, from 2020’s Hate For Sale, similarly combines Hynde’s languid, dissatis ed ache with glam-rock squalls as she leans into the mic, declaring,
can’t get no relief ”. The gig’s velocity is ceaseless, the Pretenders’ past and present hurtling down the same track.
“Biker”, from 1999’s ¡Viva El Amor!, shows the band’s verities as well as anything tonight. It’s a slow, stately rock’n’roll song dedicated to another
“dangerous lover… wild and free”, melodic and rooted in the ’70s, but muscularly built to last. Hynde’s singing is steady and clear, the atmosphere smoky, the beat four-square.
Hynde nally breaks o to apologise to someone in the crowd for a run-in earlier in the day. “We’re not doing any hits,” she then explains. “Because it’s not really the place for it. Is it?” Suddenly, she swings into a seemingly impromptu “Back On The Chain Gang” anyway, harmonies and choruses gloriously climbing. “How does it feel?” she wonders, channelling Dylan, “When I see what they’ve done to you…”
“OK, what do you wanna hear?” she asks, and picks debut single “Stop Your Sobbing”. “Stobbit, stobbit, oh-oh…” she gasps, pounding out the punched-up Kinks ballad’s words. “Better now?” she teases.
“Cuban Slide” is dug from the depths of 1981’s “Extended Play”, its Bo Diddley beat and Latin cantina vibe ending when Walbourne’s buzzsaw guitar takes a nal Bo dive. The song is a Hynde/ Honeyman-scott co-write, and these early tunes are always played in part to honour the enduring place of the late James Honeyman-scott and Pete Farndon in the Pretenders’ music. Having also played with Ray Davies, Walbourne not only plugs into punk, but shares the original band’s Kinksian language, frequently referenced tonight.
Long past The Great Escape’s cut-o time, the Pretenders rattle through “Don’t Get Me Wrong” before the curtain falls. Hynde caresses the words, “Thinking about the reworks/that go o when you smile”, and Walbourne nds one more ringing solo. “Don’t get me wrong/if I come and go, like fashion”, sings Hynde. Instead the Pretenders have stayed right where they are, still mining rock fundamentals of romance, rebellion, cra ed thrills and sensual confession.