Description
The Pretenders frontwoman takes a surprising – and successful – turn, reworking a choice selection of classic tracks and infusing them with jazzy, softer tones. Not just another covers album, Valve Bone Woe sees Hynde drown out cliché with her inbuilt insouciant cool and disregard for anything approaching stuffy tradition.
Alongside jazz, she calls on dub, psychedelia and faintly disorientating interludes of electronica to enhance the otherworldliness of her alternative American songbook. There are offbeat, luxuriously melancholic versions of jazz standards and moody bossa nova numbers (including a Kinks song inspired by the genre). She injects unsettling strangeness into Beach Boys and Nick Drake tunes, and, miraculously, manages to make a Rodgers and Hammerstein composition sound rock’n’roll.
Less an indicator of impending irrelevance than a reminder of the thrills Hynde is still capable of producing, this album is Hynde’s most adventurous experiment to date, opening new autumnal terrain for one of rock’s greatest voices. We’re glad she took the risk!
