#7
January 7 1984
Pretenders
Learning to Crawl
5 out of 5
Highlights:
Learning to Crawl
Back on the Chain Gang
Time the Avenger
Show Me
Thumbelina
My City Was Gone
2000 Miles
This one is about as perfect as an album gets. Sure, there’s that one song that I think is lesser than the others, (“I Hurt You”) but, other than that? Excellent. Does this album get the retroactive respect it deserves? Having not heard it in its entirety since that dorm room on the 4th floor of Brittany Hall in NYC, I know that I hear the singles every once in a while if I have the 80s station on Sirius or even the “First Wave” station but I don’t know that we ever talk about the record as a whole.
Because this is a fucking great rock and roll record.
And, it’s not their first. It’s their 3rd monster rock record in a row. AND it comes after two members of the band died. And, in between she had a baby with Ray Davies.
Why do people label this as “New Wave”? This is rock. Rock solid songs, playing (Holy shit, is Martin Chambers on fire or what?)…This is about as good as rock gets without filigree or frills. This is the sex of the Rolling Stones, the song craft of The Kinks, the energy of a locomotive…it’s a party on vinyl, in the woods, stumbling around looking for someone to make out with, beer in hand, pack of cigarettes fighting for space with my toothbrush in the breast pocket of my motorcycle jacket.
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