Chrissie Hynde, Talk of the Town

Chrissie Hynde made the most of her 48 hours in Austin. Starting Sunday when the Pretenders opened for Stevie Nicks at the Erwin Center – where she duetted on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – the Akron, Ohio, tough then upended the Austin Music Awards with impromptu punk. Monday at that same Moody Theater, her 40-year-old band debuted on Austin City Limits.

Chrissie Hynde on Austin City Limits, 3.13.17 (Courtesy of Scott Newton/KLRU-TV)

Courtesy of Scott Newton/KLRU-TV

Television can be a notoriously prickly medium, as the Pretenders herself noted.

“I feel a bit self-conscious being filmed, I guess,” she grinned, bangs still in her raccoon mascara eyes, defiant forever and rock-lit.

Vulnerability wasn’t ever first chair in Hynde’s onstage orchestrations. Except her voice. That voice. The voice of Dorian Gray, as it turns out – ageless. Wanting. Direct.

When the moment came, too – her turn to be prickly – everyone held their breath. Hynde as well, it seems: Haze to make the lights warmer for television was gagging the singer.

“I’m not used to being gagged – of late,” she smirked, followed closely by her spotting someone on the floor of a three-layer full house.

“I used to go out with a guy in a wheelchair. Fucker dumped me. Got tired of me pushing him around.”

Pow, “Talk of the Town” and “Back on the Chain Gang” followed. Taut, tender – terrific. Pairings doubled up pop perfection, “Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “Stop Your Sobbing,” and the triple threat, 70-minute-main-set-closing big bomp trifecta of “My City Was Gone,” “Mystery Achievement,” and “Middle of the Road,” a song that cracked like lightning at the Austin Music Awards. Pretenders’ debut for PBS ripped the same firmament.

Photo by David Brendan Hall

AMA All-Stars: (l-r) Michael Ramos, Charlie Sexton, Sabrina Ellis, Martin Chambers, LouLou, Conrad Choucroun, John Michael Schoepf, Chrissie Hynde, and Ricky Ray Jackson (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

Photo by David Brendan Hall

Martin Chambers, the only surviving member from the original London quartet of 1978, sang back-up at Austin’s Grammys, but Monday at the Moody, he resumed his God of Thunder role safely behind a drum screen. A mini drum solo into “Middle of the Road” could’ve even been longer! Lead guitar, bass, and pedal steel between Chambers and Hynde shook, rattled, and rolled the whole time, save when they slowed to their leader’s croon (“Private Life”) and the moment she proved a truly stunning jazz/gospel singer (“Hymn to Her”).

ACL fell out.

A right weave of latest album Alone worked wonders for the new material. Thuggish riff, second tune “Gotta Wait” sounded plucked from the Pretenders’ eponymous bow, while its LP bookend third from last, “I Hate Myself,” delivered its balladic knockout on a brutal last line. As intro to a walk-off tandem from The Pretenders, “Up the Neck” and the ripest punk come-on of all time, “Brass in Pocket,” the singer clearly relished a moment she’d anticipated all evening.

“Don’t cross that line,” Hynde acknowledged at the top of the program of white tape lining the floor in front of the stage to allow room for ACL cameras. “How many times have you heard that!?”

For “Brass in Pocket,” she instantly signaled the crowd over that same line.

“Thank you, Austin,” she’d gushed as much as Chrissie Hynde ever has. “Always a great town. Great, great town.”