Chrissie Hynde’s an interesting mix on stage. She’s a strong rock-and-roll presence who has announced that she hates fashion. Yet she arrived under the Orpheum Theatre’s lights last Saturday in a white jacket carefully tailored to hang just right over the back of her matching Telecaster guitar. And she’s an emotional singer whose songs are often ripe with layers of sensitivity. Yet, without any provocation, she proclaimed, "By the way, I hate sports. You got a baseball stadium here? Fuck it! You got a football stadium here? Fuck ’em, too. Sports suck."

But Hynde’s always loudly shared her opinions and even her inner conflicts, whether from the front lines of human- and animal-rights protests or from stereo speakers. And the new Pretenders tour is something of a victory march for the band. After spending part of last fall opening for the Rolling Stones, playing what Hynde called their "greatest hits" set, the group she’s led for 25 years is barely two weeks into their own headlining stint, playing spaces comparable to the sold-out Orpheum in front of hard-core fans ready to show love even for numbers like the strummy, half-formed ballad "You Bring Out the Biker in Me" that she tossed out mid concert.

But that song was an oddity, maybe even a stray from the workshop. Hynde has consistently been among the best rock songwriters of the past two decades, with a gift for wrapping humor, sting, and sweetness into her compositions — often simultaneously. At a time when solid writing has again waned (just listen to your radio) it was a pleasure to hear numbers as strong as her more popular entries, like "Don’t Get Me Wrong," "Middle of the Road," "Message of Love," "Precious," and "Back on the Chain Gang" — all driven by the terse ring of raw guitars and the granite propulsion of the band’s original drummer Martin Chambers — as well as the deftly penned and sharply delivered tunes from the Pretenders’ new Loose Screw (Artemis).

It was a bit odd seeing Hynde put down her guitar to rap and strut with the microphone like a Jamaican dancehall toaster through two of those new songs, "Complex Person" and "Nothing Breaks like a Heart," while her keyboardist tapped his sampler for dub effects. But both numbers had strong melodies, and were well performed and well received by the crowd. The obviously adoring audience even knew the lyrics to the set’s opener "Lie to Me," the raucous lead track from Loose Screw and hardly a radio staple, and they sang along right from the crack of its first chord.

Most of the crowd had obviously grown up with Hynde’s music, so they were quick to forgive her anti-Pats and -Sox slash after a round of reproachful booing, just as they would an old friend’s momentary indiscretion. At the same time, they all probably knew Hynde wouldn’t have given a shit if they hadn’t.