The first three tracks deliver on the album title. “Losing My Sense Of Taste” does sport some shimmering guitar tones that recall James Honeyman-Scott, but is otherwise a piledriver. “A Love” finds another retro tone but stays in the same tempo and mood, then “Domestic Silence” is a trudge with Hammond organ and surprising harmonies. The lost love tale of “The Copa” finally provides a quieter respite, somewhere between Tex-Mex, surf music, and ‘60s chanteuse, and the melancholy continues on “The Promise Of Love”, driven by piano with a prominent organ. She’s still brooding on “Merry Widow”, which sports a guitar part and mood change right out of Robert Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters.
“Let The Sun Come In” is a good distillation of “Up The Neck” with a cool riff to boot for the verses, and a chorus that goes somewhere else entirely. “Look Away” is another lowkey beatnik tune with thudding drums, which go on beating slowly for “Your House Is On Fire”, which actually rhymes “see ya” with “wouldn’t want to be ya” in its chorus. “Just Let It Go” is the album’s epic but one, with a keening chorus, weeping guitars, and buzzsaw electric solos. There’s a cool chordy riff for most of “Vainglorious”, but there’s also an annoying seagull effect that undermines the entire track. Compare that effect to the looped-sounding strings on “I Think About You Daily”, a collaboration with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood that sounds like nothing else on the album.
As we’ve tried to convey, Relentless is all over the place musically. There are good songs in here, and she’s still in incredible voice. It just makes it above the Mendoza line.
Pretenders Relentless (2023)—3
This album provides some interesting contrasts. In the opener, she says that she doesn’t care about rock in a rocker lamenting aging (!), while “Let the Sun Come In” expresses the exact opposite sentiment. “Look Away” marries some poignantly sad lyrics to a pretty tune in ¾ time, a first for Chrissie. A Pretenders waltz? “Domestic Silence” returns to the disturbing theme of “977”, but with much heavier music.
ReplyDelete“The Copa” and “Just Let It Go”, a couple of twangy, “Western”-sounding tracks, succeed where such attempts on “Alone” failed. Some of the songs remind me of the Velvet Underground filtered thought R.E.M., such as the strange, distorted rock of “Merry Widow” or dirgey ballds like “Your House is On Fire” and “Promise of Love”. “Vainglorious” flashes back to “Fools Must Die”, both musically and lyrically. Finally, it took a few listens for “I Think About You Daily” to grow on me, but it has. Very much in the vein of the arrangements on “The Isle of View”, the strings highlight her vulnerable vocal perfectly. I don’t know what she does to keep THAT VOICE intact at 70 years old. It’s amazing.
Yes, I agree that it does run the gamut a bit too much musically. I would have liked more sonic unity, too. Fortunately, Walbourne and the producer keep her from overstepping her bounds like she did on “Get Close”. If this is a new direction for The Pretenders, it’s good enough for me if they just keep going.