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With the band's first ever website up and running, and more cross-collateral marketing deals than you can shake an iPod at, one of rock's greatest second acts returns.

"There are no second acts in American life," F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, but like the proverbial cat, rock 'n' roll's grand princess, Chrissie Hynde, has had many lives. From the groundbreaking ‘70s rock icon who, with a supremely cathartic band recorded one of the great debut albums ever, to mature mid-'90s pop star to her latest reincarnation (and it's a doozy), Hynde has consistently defied expectations, yet always with her rock and roll bona fides intact.

Break Up The Concrete, the Pretenders' first album in six years is as far from rock as James Hetfield is from Travis Tritt. But Travis would love this incarnation of the Pretenders. Kicking country fried boogie woogie and lilting acoustic ballad tearjerkers, Break Up The Concrete is a little bit country, and a little less rock 'n' roll.

If you trawl the net long enough you'll find new Pretenders tunes everywhere, including "Love's A Mystery," with a drawling Hynde singing about "lovers of today" with her classic willowy vocal surrounded by steel guitars, a lazy beat and Main Street friendly acoustic guitar strums. The Pretenders offer a traditional post-punk take on "Don't Cut Your Hair," an aw-shucks country-tinged ballad in "Don't Lose Faith In Me" and chug-a-lug, Pabst-drenched rockabilly in "Boots Of Chinese Plastic."

After all this pickin' and grinnin' you may wonder "Where are the guest spots from Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill and Shania Twain?" Chrissie Hynde still has enough firepower to match 100 fresh scrubbed plastic country queens, as heard in the bluesy bar blowout, "Almost Perfect." Hynde's voice is still a purring cat of tiger-like intentions: sexuality at full tilt, cynicism in check, and dangerous lyrics at every turn, as in "Almost Perfect"'s "Autistic repetitious -- people would probably be suspicious ... unemployable, illegal, you're a film by Don Siegel."

What does that mean? It's the sound of the words that matter, as when Hynde sang, "Got brass in pocket/Got bottle, I'm gonna use it/Intention I feel inventive/Gonna make you, make you, make you notice." And I won't even go near "Mystery Achievement" or the remarkable 7/4 s-excapades of "Tattooed Love Boys" ("Changing tires, upstairs bro!").

Older and wiser, Hynde is no less adventurous. Her second act begins with Break Up The Concrete on September 23rd. Joining Hynde on the album is a band including guitarist James Walbourne, pedal steel guitarist Eric Heywood, bassist Nick Wilkinson and legendary session drummer Jim Keltner. Does this lineup match the original Pretenders manpower of guitarist James Honeyman Scott, bassist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers (the latter still in the band but not on the record)? No band ever will, but that was yesterday -- and yesterday's gone.