The core function of puberty would have eventually taken over, but listening to the Pretenders and particularly Pretenders II at a young age made me want to understand women. To hear the dangerous, lark like vocals from a princess and provocateur such as Chrissie Hynde drove the most juvenile engine to a point on the brink of overload. You can say all the clichés such as, “it’s been said before” or “there’s nothing new under the sun” but it is not at all Pollyannaish to theorize that immersing a 13-year old’s burgeoning libido into the lyrics of “Bad Boys Get Spanked” is a jump start of sexual awakening.
Backing up a step, it needs to be clarified that the Pretenders were not intended as merely a vehicle for Hynde’s songwriting or sexuality (although their lineage shows an almost clear declaration to the contrary). They were a unification of punk rock’s dark and middle ages, a band that helped dawn the glorious movement of ‘new wave’. Their first album was an atom bomb, part spiky punk sensibility and part anticipation of the days when slightly dangerous styling went mainstream. Backed by the late James Honeyman-Scott’s virtuosity, the precedent set by the first Pretender’s record was REM’s Murmur before Michael Stipe was professionally precocious.
When Pretenders II came, it was immediately the ugly duckling – it was not the genre bashing exercise that came before, merely a product of the same formula. There was even a Ray Davies cover. Closer examination however, shows that it was packed with a similar number of outstanding efforts – while not generally revered like “Precious” or “Tattooed Love Boys”, songs such as “Adultress” and “Message of Love” were outstanding, the latter being filled with some of the most inventive rhythm section work in the band’s entire catalog. Littered with gems like “Day After Day” and “The English Roses” – again, pay mind to the unconventional beats Hynde has to work with, the Pretenders II is far from spotty. Only the most cynical fan would purport as such. The re-issue, two discs strong and filled with live and demo tracks, is nice but in a sense, it only serves to gild the lily of the original. As much as they’re a delight for fans to line up in their collections, these trifles shouldn’t define what was a fine album on its own legs.
Clearly, II was not the seminal record – it falls comfortably into the rock pantheon with other “difficult second albums.” It is a disappointment, only because its older sister was so much more. However, a more judicious view from the perspective of decades would make the argument that perhaps they are more bookends of the same zeitgeist. |