Pretenders - Creem

Dishpan Hyndesight

Learning To Crawl
The Pretenders

Joe (void where prohibited by law) Fernbacher, Creem, 5/84

I can’t help myself--I am all aboil with excitement as I approach this review of the new Pretenders LP, Learning To Crawl. See Joe approach the review. Approach the review, Joe. See Joe run away form the review. Run away, Joe. See Joe go and approach that golden-tressed, loosely dressed girl waiting there at the bus stop. Go steal her bus pass, Joe, go moles...See Joe go to a liquor store. See Joe go to a movie. See Joe trying to get away from this review. See the bus almost coming. Out damn review, out!!!!

For some reason, I really wanted to write about this record, but now that it’s here, I don’t for the life of me remember why. It might have had something to do with the fact that “Middle Of The Road” is, uncategorically, the most engaging song I’ve heard on the radio since they played the Tubes’ “Talk To Ya Later” to death.

Or it could have something to do with Chrissie Hynde (the personification of that ever-elusive rock everybabe if ever there was one) and her continued homage to pissoffedness. Or it might have had something to do with the fact that during a particularly violent bout with the grape, I thoroughly convinced myself that Martin Chambers bore an unnerving resemblance to Max Gail (Barney Miller’s Stan Wojohowiecz, a character born in Buffalo, N.Y., my home town, for all you buffs of the trivial out there in the wasteland). Or that Chambers used to possess the most frightening set of sideburns I had ever seen, thereby instantly putting him in my good graces.

It might’ve been a perverse desire to dwell on the ODs of James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon--no, it definitely wasn’t that, because everyone’s mentioning that these days and I don’t really want to...Death, especially that kind of death, is much too personal and should just be left alone.

Might it have had something to do with the abstractly apparitional coolness of C. Hynde’s playful dominatrix contralto? It might, since her voice, with its unerring achiness, has always been the mainstay and major attraction of this band. Take, for example, the cringing rendition here of the Persuaders’ early 70s hit, “Thin Line Between Love And Hate” in which Ms. Hynde shows us some soul chops heretofore unexpected but somehow always yearned for.

Or, perhaps, more than anything else, it could have been Chrissie Hynde’s uncanny ability to swear better than anybody on record that drew me to this record like a leather studded fly with a whip in one hand and a dictionary of slang in the other. Her “shittin’ bricks,” and “...oh no, not me baby, so fuck off,” on “Precious” from the first Pretenders LP are indeed precious gems of rock scatology, and Ms. Hynde continues her penchant for steel mill conversation on this record with “Watching The Clothes,” a song I started out hating and ended up loving. Beside the fact that it would make a great companion piece to ZZ Top’s “TV Dinner,” Chrissie’s growling, “I’ve been kissing ass/Trying to keep it clean?” is great in execution as well as intention. I mean, the lady sure can speak to the get down-ness of life. “Watching The Clothes” is more honest than Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard For The Money,” and that’s all I’m gonna say on that subject.

Or maybe it was, all in all, just that excitable rockin’ of “Middle Of The Road,” with the fervent Robbie McIntosh’s guitar solos, that drew me into this assignment. Whatever it was, this review will self-destruct in five seconds, ’cause here comes that bus.

Crawling up from his private abyss of acerbity, he gazed upon Hynde as she was bathing in the light of klieg. Soon, like Actaeon of old, he was transformed into a stag, the dogs of review once again yawping ’n’ nipping at his heels wanting a taste of his blood, wanting a taste of his needs, wanting his review in ON TIME. Deadline as metaphor is a hard thing to try and sell to an angry editor staring at a gaping hole in his ’zine, so I guess I best stop.

P.S.--I didn’t talk about the other previously released songs, “Back On The Chain Gang,” “My City Was Gone,” and “2000 Miles,” simply because they were “previously released.” Also the “Time Won’t Let Me” riff in “Time The Avenger” is...simply there, that’s all.

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