THE PRETENDERS METRO, JUNE 2
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Unfortunately it was. After a dissipated and disappointing sophomore effort, Farndon departed from the band and then from life itself, and Honeyman-Scott succumbed to a similar fate less than a year later. Hynde and Chambers hired new hands and roared back with 1984’s Learning to Crawl, another instant classic and perhaps the best album ever made about trying to strike a balance between motherhood and artistry, toughness and vulnerability, love and hate. But it was Hynde’s last gasp. Since then she’s fallen victim to a puzzling slackness, joining forces with reggae hacks UB40 for a flaccid cover of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe”–so mediocre that of course it became a huge international hit–and then reforming her own band for two mixed-bag albums, 1986’s Get Close and 1990’s Packed! There’s a consensus diagnosis of the Pretenders’ plight: high turnover has robbed Hynde of consistent support, yielding flat results no matter how strong the songs. Packed! goes a long way toward proving this theory; a set of fine compositions that run the gamut from the tough (“Sense of Purpose”) to the tender (“When Will I See You”), the album comes off sounding as bland as a collection of carpet-store jingles. See your local cutout bin for details.
But the only true place to test rumors of rejuvenation is onstage. Though Hynde’s Urge Overkill obsession has been well documented, the Pretenders hadn’t passed through Chicago since the Get Close tour, and the intensifying fervor of the Metro crowd reflected the long dry spell. After more than an hour’s delay–now there’s a real rock band–the band sauntered onstage and ripped into the opening chords of “Downtown (Akron).” Hynde stood planted center stage, flanked by her supporting cast–ex-Katydid Adam Seymour on guitar and ex-Primitive Andy Hobson on bass–and backed by Chambers, who overlooked the rest of the band from a high riser. As the song wound down, Hynde turned to the crowd, bowed, and then wriggled out of her wraparound skirt to reveal her familiar rail-thin physique. Throughout the early part of the show the band mined new material; “Hollywood Perfume” was especially powerful, with Hynde machine-gunning her rhythm-guitar parts into the audience. And while this lineup has neither the velocity of the Pretenders outfit nor the rock solidity of the Learning to Crawl crew, Hynde’s vocal prowess and the heft of the songs smoothed any seams in the presentation.
