![]() She’s not hemmed in thematically or linguistically by modern mores, viewing them through her own lens: “ Domestic Silence” rhymes its title with “violence”, as the “hexed” singer is “blue one day and black the next”, the situation’s specifics mattering less to Hynde than immersion in another torrid romance. She assesses this song’s lover with sensuality and humour (“I’m not scared of your lovely mouth/It’s your words that get in the way, saying ordinary things…”). Guitars chime like classic Pretenders on “ A Love”, as Hynde’s phrasing dips and soars, much as she mastered Dylan’s mazy words in her lockdown covers album, Standing In The Doorway. Yet the literary effect weds to the music, and doesn’t let up. If her equilibrium is only unbalanced by a failed affair, while Walbourne’s guitars buck and squall regardless, maybe the grander claims are just a feint to write another love song. “I must be going through the motions at best,” she fears, before the next line’s relief: “I thought of you so much that it caused me unrest”. “I don’t even care about rock’n’roll/All of my favourites feel tired and old.” A major rock star equably pondering senility is less startling than the thought of Hynde losing the faith that first took her out of Akron, Ohio, driven by dreams of Brian Jones into London punk’s nascent heart. “I must be going through a metamorphosis/A senile dementia or some kind of psychosis,” is how Hynde starts opener “ Losing My Sense Of Taste”, over glowering storms of guitar. At the same time, as the album title suggests, this potent work leaves the current Pretenders fiercely resurgent. Lyrics about a world in turmoil, from climate change to national decline, become symptomatic backdrops for personal entropy. Even “The Orlando Hotel in late November” in “ The Promise Of Love”, with snow laying thick, offers only a different colour of piercing clarity. “From San Francisco to Sydney, there’s no rain,” Hynde sings on “ Your House Is On Fire”. Relentless often exists in sun-baked climes, dry heat making the singer squint to see the worst, searing air burning off delusion in pitilessly clear sky. Instead, Hynde and guitarist/co-writer James Walbourne have slowed their music down to take forensically precise snapshots of regret and dismay, as if dissecting emotional car crashes. Turning 71 doesn’t mean, either, that Relentless joins the post- Time Out Of Mind genre of rockers stoutly confronting the Grim Reaper. That voice, like Hynde’s wiry, shaggy-haired silhouette, never really changes, though her writing hasn’t clung to youth. ORDER NOW: The Who are on the cover of the latest UNCUT.The band have meanwhile maintained creative consistency, proudly declared in the setlists of this year’s club tour, which sifted gold of comparable lustre from their songbook. An ache is inbuilt, adding patented, wry hurt to the brisk, chiming pop of the Pretenders’ ’70s and ’80s hit parade. ![]() ![]() Chrissie Hynde’s voice has always curled with contempt and sorrow, curt dismissal and self-critique.
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