Chrissie Hynde & Pals
★★★★★
Duets Special
PARLOPHONE. CD/DL/LP
New solo album featuring 13 duets with famous friends.
On her last solo break from The Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde recorded an album of Dylan covers, accompanied by James Walbourne. The arrangements were simple but you could feel the depth of her understanding of the songs in her voice. Four years on she’s released another covers album, this time songs by different artists, sung as duets with different singers. Here too you sense her relationship with the songs. An interesting selection, mostly on the slow side, there’s retro pop (Love Letters, with Garbage’s Shirley Manson; It’s Only Love, with Julian Lennon); R&B (Me & Mrs Jones, with k.d. lang; Every Little Bit Hurts, with Carleen Anderson); and psychedelic folk (Dolphins, with Dave Gahan). The project grew from Hynde wanting to work with Rufus Wainwright. As it turns out, the pair’s heartbreaking Always On My Mind, like Elvis in an empty church, is one of the highlights of an album that’s rarely short of lovely.