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It just feels like a lively, deeply felt Pretenders album, one that has better songs and better performances than usual.
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The blues- and country-influenced songs on Break Up the Concrete are an engaging departure from the group's earlier hits, while Hynde's dynamic alto voice gives the set the unmistakable Pretenders identity.
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The Pretenders’ ninth studio album is a pleasant roots record.
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Her ninth studio album, recorded in just two weeks with an entirely new crew of Pretenders, just might be her most congenial, and certainly rootsiest, collection yet.
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Fortunately, with her velvet-sandpaper vocals and unflappable rock-chick cool, Hynde is more than enough to build an album around.
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Many of Hynde's new songs call for honesty and compassion, and even if she never quite finds those things, her search yields some pretty vital rock 'n' roll.
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MojoThis record is looser and more organic, and a different sonic palette for Hynde. [Jul 2009, p.106]
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Though the album can’t really stand with the Pretenders first three, it approximates them pretty well, like a faux vintage T-shirt that’s faded just right.
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Staunch admirers of the traditional Pretenders sound might not like this record, but I say, “Yee-haw!”
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Break Up the Concrete seems a bit uneven: The faster numbers begin to sound the same after a while, and the album hits a slight lull halfway through.
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Working with a new band of co-conspirators, Hynde’s subversively hard-core Concrete serves up just enough old Pretenders swing to lure back fans confused by 2002’s relatively lackluster "Loose Screw."
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Q MagazineIt's Hynde who steals the show with her lip-curling vibrato, part Elvis, part Dusty, never more intoxicating than on the seductive 'Almost Perfect.' [Jul 2009, p.129]
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The result is the best Pretenders record in years, a mix of galloping rockabilly and country & western songs, delivered in Hynde's trademark snarl.
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Along with four new Pretenders, she's crafted a statement that's stripped bare and dangerous, just like Hynde herself, who abandons much of her haughty cool to expose some long-concealed wounds as painful as the ones that Janis Joplin unfurled on "Pearl."
User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 9
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Mixed: 1 out of 9
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Negative: 1 out of 9
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TSOct 29, 2008