1980@40: The PRETENDERS

A yell from the distance and the band kicks in for a few bars for really kicking in with a streamlined punk groove as a voice that's seen the worst and best sings about a tough lover. She can't or doesn't have to finish what he makes her wanna as the band bash into a figure like Holidays in the Sun. It's like the Sex Pistols with Mae West on vocals. The ecstasy collides with a kind of dread until they can no longer be separated. It's late 1979 and the album will be released in early 1980. A crucial few years between punk's self-administered demise and the reconstructed rock of the next decade and this band has both covered. Even the breakdown section with the guys sounding nervous on backing singing the title as if they were at peepholes while Chrissie Hynde's supervixen continues the tale does this, taking everything into the kind of cinema that was coming out of Europe at the time and earlier. Precious is a song of transgression.

The Phone Call starts with a grinding two chord riff playing over the sound of an old rotary phone being dialled and the beeps of an engaged signal. When the riff changes to a crashing chord pattern the beeps speed up, timed to fit the music. Hynde comes in either extremely panned or double tracked so that her voice sounds the way a threatened person might hear it. Apart from the last lines of each verse the vocal is spoken, delivered in a low conspiratorial tone before letting loose with a yell about the need for caution. Is it to a field agent, someone who thinks their life is like a Le Carre novel? The song, having flitted between non-rock time signatures for extra edginess, ends in a hang up and the beeps of a dead line.

Up The Neck begins with an off sounding bright guitar figure from outside of the 4/4 standard that relaxes into a decent rock song about more of the kind of co-dependent/narcissistic tough love from Precious but scarier.

Tattooed Love Boys begins with a jangling fanfare on lightly chorused guitar over a chugging adaptation of the Bo Diddley beat. That frantic tension played by an expert rhythm section keeps this song's difficult patterns going while Hynde comes in with a far more darker extension of the rough sex of Precious. Hynde has since explained that it was an account of a sexual assault at the hands of a biker gang when she was a lot younger an more reckless. While the idiosyncratic rock groove suggests a rapid confusion the false ending in the middle which breaks into an instrumental section before the story resumes. It gets no better but her anger at the memory is tooled quite perfectly into the sudden final lines involving a threat of disfigurement and a strong assertion and then BAM! over. "You are that!"

Space Invader is an instrumental that moves well and has enough material to interest for its brief run time and sounds like a music cue for a procedural montage in an action film and indeed served so in an episode of The Sopranos decades later. It ends with a moosh of video game sounds.

The Wait begins with a punk chord riff that knows you want it to be a predictable count of four or eight between bursts but adds one extra which throws everyone off every time. Hynde come in with a rhythmic chant that, for all its Elvis Costello spitting, is utterly unintelligible. I never knew what any of those lines were until I looked them up online for this article. There's a bit where she sings "my baby" but that's all I got until now. But that only counts to the urgency of the song which is about a kid finding his own amusements, left to himself. Lots of fun in pool halls and pinball parlours but the kid ends up each night crashing in late or just staring up at the streetlight, unloved to the point of stasis. There is nothing but the kind of violence in the rest of his day to offer any pushback that might instruct instead of harden. Pete Farndon plays a great runaway bassline in the choruses and Honeyman Scott gives us a wild screaming cacophony for a solo amidst the crunching riffage.

Stop Your Sobbing is dedicated to the other side of this band as far as its songwriting prowess and tributes go. It's a cover of a Kinks song (produced as the B-side of Kid by Nick Lowe) and, while it registers lower in volume that the surrounding tracks, demonstrates that a band who love the song they are covering will probably produce some magic. It's not just advances in recording technology that come into play here, it's arrangement with a gorgeous jangling guitar wash and spacey rhythm section and performance as Hynde delivers a powered nuance that adds great meaning to what might well sound like a trite lyric (but wasn't when The Kinks did it either) but is really a heartfelt plea.

Kid begins with a Rockpile-style '60s rock ballad shuffle and low string figure before Hynde comes in with the most sustained use of her trademark tremolo so far. If there was nuance before in her stories of debauched co-dependence here it is the shifting weight of parental accountability vs a plea for understanding by the parent. Hynde revealed that the lyric was about a child who discovers his mother is a sex worker. Hynde's role as the parent is given such a sense of patience and love despite all that it stings to listen to. And that's before you get to the crashing middle eight and lament of its simply stated message. This lifts a little, enough for the extraordinary turn of James Honeyman Scott whose short but dazzling solo ends in a tribute to George Harrison as he rounds of the sinuous ringing with a pure bell like harmonic. Beautiful.

Private Life enters, relaxing into a three-in-the-morning light reggae as a woman tells her married lover that he is no longer worth the trouble. A male falsetto backing behind the chorus tells him to stop lying. Hynde's delivery is a sophisticated sick and tired as she doesn't let him get a word in and leaves him to the night and his narcissism. It's creepy in the best way which was equalled if not bettered by Grace Jones who brought her own autobiography to it. Assured and gently deadly.

Brass in Pocket starts with a flourish of clean chorused guitar then kicks into a light strutting walk as Hynde lists what she has and is. She has money, a confidence that feels new, new dance moves and the will to use everything she has to get noticed. No solos or breaks, just the chant of a young woman who is determined to find the centre of the stage and win. Maybe it's the influence of the video that went with it but I also hear a lot of wishfulness here, the solid rhythm and airy playing are supporting a series of claims made in front of a mirror while she's getting dressed to hit the clubs. In the video she's a waitress at an English caff. She delivers a tea to a guy sleeping it off at a table and takes it back with a sigh. Three likely lads played by the rest of the band come in. She takes their order with a clear hope on her face which drops when their girlfriends arrive. She watches as they leave, the car disappearing down the street as her gaze follow through the window for the final wordless vocals to the bookended guitar flourish. It's more about what she wants than what she'll get but for now she at least knows how to start, how to look, how to dance and attract. Not tonight? Meh, there's always next weekend.

Lovers of Today begins with a gentle descending arpeggio on the guitar as Hynde begins in a gently plaintive voice. The song builds to a guitar arrangement that Mick Ronson or Brian May might have imagined, orchestral but also rocky. The vocal melody falls and lifts, moving unpredictably through the chords. It's a kind of punk Jacques Brel and appropriately so for its description of male vulnerability. Never has Hynde's lachrymal tremolo been so appropriately used. She can stretch a wordless vocal phrase out with it and sear through hearts. This beautifully saddening torch ballad doesn't waste a moment of its time on the record, even to the point of Hynde's defiant assertion, "no, I'll never feel like a man in a man's world" in the fade.

Mystery Achievement starts with bars of straight 4/4 bashing on the drums which could be the Glitter Band until Hynde comes in with some lush vocalisation. The bass starts a modal circle and the guitar chords on the beat. The verse is a yearning for a breakthrough but it's a yearning of youth (I'm already twenty and still not famous!) which, despite the protestations of the verse, extends into the chorus where she is obsessed by the lack of recognition and adoration. In the hands of most other bands this would sound poncy and cute but The Pretenders make it urgent but anchored by the everyday. In the middle of the song we get bars and bars of the bass grind before the guitar lifts us only to a more frustrated state. The outro is a rising guitar and bass figure storming under Hynde's vocalising. building to a crunch. They decided against using the last track like a b-side.

Boldly clean guitars with tasteful use of chorus. Strong articulate bass. Clear drums. Highly characterful vocals from a central figure with a clear strong identity. You could say all of that about The Smiths except where The Pretenders were brash and flavoursome with their musical decisions as a rule and The Smiths were mostly bland to the taste despite some moments of greatness (and I really do mean moments: not a single album is strong all the way through).  Brass in Pocket is like a future Smiths song without the posturing million extra syllables, a kind of female How Soon is Now minus the precious boy's self-pity. The Pretenders offer here a source point for a major stream of the decade's rock music.

Even if they hadn't done that, though, they were able to construct a rock record that sounded and felt like it had been lived personally and not always pleasantly, a record that remembered why British punk still means more to future generations of fifteen year olds than the punk from anywhere else and a record that proved progression from that jagged rock music neither have to throw the guitars away or turn them up higher. This is the sound of a band who didn't just hone their craft in the sticky carpet pubs and turn up but could work comensally with a producer like Chris Thomas (see also the Beatles and the Sex Pistols) to fashion a great album, not just a first album. Here begins 1980.