This peeks at a great band's demise. Everything that made them connect is here -- the way Jimmy Scott uses phasers and harmonics, the way Chrissie Hynde shows tough love -- but the record is a drag. Bad blood must have drained them. (Half the group was strung out and Hynde was after a married man, Ray Davies of the Kinks.) By the time "Louie Louie" comes, we hear the weight and pain of the album as a tribute to one last get-up. One year later this version of the Pretenders was dead.

2009-04-08 - Joe Cormack

track list The Adultress Bad Boys Get Spanked Message Of Love I Go To Sleep Birds Of Paradise Talk Of The Town Pack It Up Waste Not Want Not Day After Day Jealous Dogs The English Roses Louie Louie