Album: The Pretenders ***

Loose Screw, Eagle

Eagle Records has become a sort of rest-home for old rockers, a place where superannuated stars like James Brown, Dr John, Alice Cooper and Alexander O'Neal can be put out to pasture without too great a loss of dignity. As such, it's debatable whether it's the right place for The Pretenders to fetch up following their departure from Warners in the wake of the under-performing Viva el Amor. One would have thought there was rather more spring left to their step than such a move suggests, but in the absence of any reality-TV or sitcom-actress-related promotional opportunities, even established rock bands must make harbour where they may. There's certainly plenty of bite remaining in Adam Seymour's guitar riffs, which have the terse astringency of Wilko Johnson on a track like "Fools Must Die"; Chrissie Hynde's spitfire temperament is likewise evident in surly lines like "Spare me the details/ The entrails and the gore" and "The world rejoices when fools die". As before, romantic treachery looms large in her worldview, with "Lie to Me", "Kinda Nice, I Like It", "Nothing Breaks like a Heart", "I Should of" and "The Losing" all dealing with things like infidelity, loss, and the outlaw lure of bad men. "Can't rest until I'm losing," she admits in "The Losing", further elaborating on her quixotic attitude in "Complex Person", where she claims "I'm a complex person/ I try to improve, but just see how I worsen". In the circumstances, the cover of The All-Seeing I's "Walk like a Panther" is handled with aplomb, its theme of pride in the face of humiliation appearing to resonate strongly with both her private and professional situations.