Today’s Vinyl: Pretenders

Go listen to this one again, all the way through, and tell me how many debut albums have been this good. Recorded in 1979 after the Nick Lowe-produced single for Stop your Sobbing, this record dropped in January of 1980 with a sound so fully-formed that it leaves you wondering how good the drugs really were around then. Mixing reggae, rock, punk, classic pop balladry and a freaking metric ton of attitude, this record has as many stylistic flights of fancy as London Callingyet, like that Clash classic, manages to pull them altogether in something cohesive and natural. This is overextension at its best.

It sounds great, too. The recording is perfect – rich, warm, enveloping, blissfully free of the brightness and compression that would characterize so much of the coming decade’s recordings. The real revelation here is that guitar sound:  James Honeyman Scott’s Gibson “jingle-jangle” (as Johnny Marr, who credited Scott as the biggest influence on his sound, would later describe it) is so subtle and precise that it completely transforms the sound of the band. The original liner notes implore the listener to “PLAY THIS ALBUM LOUD” but this record is a near-perfect classic no matter what volume you listen at.

The album was remastered in 2006 and a number of demos and singles were added to the reissue. It’s on iTunes here and Lala here.