Fans of the Pretenders' 1995 live CD, The Isle of View, will be delighted that the DVD release of the band's televised performance at London's Jacob Street Studios (the source for that album) is an even greater thrill. Clearer now is the Pretenders' experimental intention to transform and unify its songbook with majestic pop arrangements--comparable to, say, George Martin revisiting a load of diverse Beatles songs and making them all sound and feel, for an hour or two, like "Yesterday." For the Pretenders, the result is exquisite. Familiar recordings such as "Sense of Purpose" and "I Hurt You" are renewed with brilliant, acoustic-based pop clarity; other songs are almost unbearably beautiful as their subtlest values intensify. A cover of Radiohead's "Creep" proves a bathetic misstep, but the emotional fulfillment of "Kid," "Criminal," and "Revolution" make The Isle of View an essential live set. --Tom Keogh