(Artemis Records)
There really is no point in talking about the Pretenders without taking some shot at trying to nail down the character of Chrissie Hynde. As lead singer and angry mother of the band, she wails away on vocals and rips out the chords on lead guitar. This singer brings every side of herself to the Pretenders' album, Loose Screw. Though the band (Adam Seymour on lead guitar and backing vocals, Martin Chambers on drums and Andy Hobson on bass) backs Chrissie up with steady hands and tight rhythms, they seem to drop away and acknowledge that the Pretenders are Hynde's megaphone. Because she takes control and stays there, it is all but impossible to separate Hynde from the Pretenders.
Given this, it is necessary to look at Loose Screw in the context of Hynde's own supposed nonconformist admission of remaining unattached and distinct. Nearly the entire album is laced with her first person perspective and personal point of view. She treats it like there is little room for another voice. Though this seems somewhat egotistical, Loose Screw comes off as anything but that.
The highlight of the album, \Complex Person,"" declares that Hynde is complex to the point of being inconsistent. In the song there's an assertion of womanhood as she sings ""The builders and the workers/ When they whistle and they shout/ I'd like to give them something/ To shout at me about."" A startling image suddenly pops up of an aging female rocker punching a construction worker with a wicked left hook.
On the whole, Loose Screw is like just about any other Pretenders album. There are bits of Learning to Crawl, Viva El Amor and Last of the Independents floating around the tracks of the recent release. Hynde seems to be caught with an echo of her bigger hits bouncing off her eardrums. ""Middle of the Road"" can be found in ""I Should Of"" and ""Brass in Pocket"" reappears toned down in ""Kinda Nice, I Like It."" While these old Pretenders classics resound, they don't make ""Loose Screw"" sound like some repetition of days gone by. Instead they reinforce the new album with the strength of a long career and Chrissie Hynde's weathered but resilient potency.
