Pretenders II by The Pretenders

Pretenders II arrived on Sire in August 1981, and it's the second and last album by the Pretenders' original lineup: Chrissie Hynde on guitar and lead vocals, James Honeyman-Scott on guitar and keyboards, Pete Farndon on bass and Martin Chambers on drums. Chris Thomas produced it, and the band sounds tougher and more battle-hardened than before, the new wave jangle backed by a rock and roll punch.

Hynde is the whole show: cool, sardonic and sexy one moment, wounded the next. "Message of Love" is a big, ringing statement of intent; "Talk of the Town" is all chiming guitars and wistful longing; "Day After Day" and "Pack It Up" snarl and rattle, and "Bad Boys Get Spanked" and "The Adultress" crackle with menace. Honeyman-Scott's guitar is the glue, bright and melodic and endlessly inventive. Two of the songs had already been out as singles in Britain, and on an EP in the US.

The album reached 7 in the UK and 10 on the Billboard 200 and went gold in America, but the story darkens right after. The next year, within a single week, Farndon was fired and Honeyman-Scott was dead; Farndon himself was gone by 1983, and it took a new lineup to make Learning to Crawl.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.