Blondie: Pollinator

BLONDIE: POLLINATOR (2017)

1) Doom Or Destiny; 2) Long Time; 3) Already Naked; 4) Fun; 5) My Monster; 6) Best Day Ever; 7) Gravity; 8) When I Gave Up On You; 9) Love Level; 10) Too Much; 11) Fragments.

Okay, I am going to assume that the album title is a simple reference to Debbie Harry's interest in beekeeping (something that was also reflected in the accompanying tour)... because if it is not, some very disturbing implications are on the way. Then again, we certainly live in a world when the ripe age of 72 is by no means a rigid impediment on the way of, um, some good old pollina­tion, or is it? Anyway, let us not forget that, for all of Debbie's legendary sexuality, the songs were always much more about emotional than physical proximity, and Pollinator is no exception. The important question is not how Debbie handles her sexuality at this time — it is whether, after two disappointing albums in a row, there is any reason at all to be concerned about yet another album from a band that almost ridiculously refuses to die.

Of one thing I am totally sure: Pollinator is a surprising improvement over its two predecessors. Surprising, yes, but perhaps not unpredictable: one could have guessed that after a long period of trying to «adapt» to current fashions, the band would eventually just fuck it and return to their roots — good old pop-rock with steady Seventies' beats. For the first time since No Exit, they seem fully content to simply sound like themselves, with one questionable exception: their new keyboard player, Matt Katz-Bohen, who still seems bent on not only privatizing the band's sound, but also on turning them into as much of a 21st century synth-pop ensemble as possible. Perhaps if he had a knack for extracting simple, but emotionally effective patterns from those keyboards (something like Arcade Fire's ʽSprawl IIʼ, for instance), it would have been okay, but too many of these synth barriers just sound like formulaic techno-pop, and end up robotizing Harry's presence as well. But yes, it is also true that his keyboards are the only thing that put the music squarely into the modern age — that, and the singer's aging voice.

Once again, very few songs are written by Blondie members themselves. The Harry/Stein duet is represented on only two tracks, the first of which, ʽDoom Or Destinyʼ, opens the album on a par­ticularly retro note — they even feature Joan Jett on backing vocals! — with big Clem Burke drums, fast chugging guitar, and Debbie's vocals ever so slightly cosmetized to get her back that sardonic, spitfire flavor of youth. It does not really work, of course: the chorus hook is just an endless repeat of the question "is it doom or destiny?", and there is no way that the enthusiasm of youth could be properly rekindled now, but already the fact that they are able to run through it without falling flat on their faces speaks for something. The second one, ʽLove Levelʼ, is also a stand out due to its heavy dependence on brass fanfare, which still has to clash with Katz-Bohen's bubbling electro-pop synth brew, but is fun nevertheless.

On the other end of the spectrum is the album's most, if not only, modern-sounding number: ʽFunʼ, provided for Blondie by a bunch of corporate songwriters and the producer of TV On The Radio, sounds like a 2010s take on Modern Talking and could be done by just about any dance-pop outfit in the world. Forty years ago that vibe, though it always sounded silly, was at least novel; these days, it no longer has the benefit of starry-eyed innocence. But I can understand, somebody told them that they still had to grind out a hit single and they obliged — in fact, they did make it into a hit single, their highest charting one since ʽMariaʼ, making the idea of Hot Dance Rhythms For Young People all the more ironic. Can't help admiring the achievement, though: even Cher was only 52 when she recorded ʽBelieveʼ.

Personally, I am much more a fan of the B-side, ʽMy Monsterʼ, written by none other than Johnny Marr himself, who also contributes his trademark guitar to the recording (unfortunately, it is once again all but swallowed up by the synthesizers). This is a much more Blondie-like song, from the steady 4/4 beat to the opening "human beings are stupid things when we're young" to the oh-so-well-known Blondie ability to go from bitter irony to gentle romanticism and back at a moment's notice. There are several more songs like that here — ʽBest Day Everʼ, co-written with Nick Valensi of The Strokes; ʽWhen I Gave Up On Youʼ, written by YouTube resident musical comedians The Gregory Brothers specially for Blondie in Blondie style (but also featuring their trademark Autotune tricks on Debbie's voice); ʽLong Timeʼ, co-written by Debbie with Dev Hynes of Blood Orange with obvious echoes of ʽHeart Of Glassʼ embedded in the rhythmic patterns and in the keyboard melody. None of this is great, but all of it is more fun than ʽFunʼ, and the textural diversity is quite refreshing.

Above and beyond everything, I am very happy about how Debbie sounds throughout this, even when they are torturing her voice with unnecessary autotuning. Unless you concentrate very hard upon comparison with classic Blondie songs, complaining about how much of her former range she has lost, there are really very few indications of how old that voice is — there are, however, plenty of indications that the fire of life is still very, very bright within the old girl. Those catfight dramas, those emotional turmoils, those fits of ecstasy or ire that made the original records so much more than just a collection of empty hooks — they are all here, even if the hooks them­selves are far less stronger than they used to.

It all comes together on the final track, ʽFragmentsʼ, taken by Blondie from an unknown song­writer, Adam Johnston: ironically, the songwriter was 17 years old when he wrote the song, yet its message — "you can't create more time, you just make it" — agrees more than perfectly with the mindset of the aged diva, and the frantic chorus-question, "do you love me now? do you love me now?", sounds as if it is really addressed to all of us rather than some imaginary lover figure. Don't worry, Ms. Harry: you could have done a lot worse than this, we do love you still, and here's a thumbs up to "fucking prove it". (But could you please bring back Jimmy Destri for your next album? This Katz-Bohen guy is just untenable).

Blondie: Ghosts Of Download

BLONDIE: GHOSTS OF DOWNLOAD (2014)

1) Sugar On The Side; 2) Rave; 3) A Rose By Any Name; 4) Winter; 5) I Want To Drag You Around; 6) I Screwed Up; 7) Relax; 8) Take Me In The Night; 9) Make A Way; 10) Mile High; 11) Euphoria; 12) Take It Back; 13) Back­room; 14*) Put Some Color On You; 15*) Can't Stop Wanting; 16*) Prism.

The release of this album was accompanied by a most strange marketing move: it was issued only as an integral part of a 2-CD package, collectively called Blondie 4(0) Ever and containing, in addition to the main disc with 13 new songs, a Greatest Hits Deluxe Redux disc with new studio re-recordings of 11 «classic» songs, «to commemorate the band's 40th anniversary», so it was stated in press releases. Weird way to go about it, if you ask me, but then marketing does often work in weird ways — who am I, next to an experienced marketologist, to measure the degree of weirdness to which the average buyer's mind can be professionally attuned?

Anyway, we will not be concentrating on these re-recordings: based on brief snippets that I have heard, they are all technically very close to the originals, Debbie's aged voice being the main differentiating factor, and I assume they just did this out of sheer fun, to check whether they still could or could not recreate their old schtick in a bookish manner. And still another possible factor is the effect of contrast — because with Ghosts Of Download, they have now moved away as far from the old schtick as is humanly possible. The only link is that they are still a pop ensemble (as opposed to, say, Napalm Death or Tokyo String Quartet), on a mission to churn out catchy pop songs. Everything else is different.

Logically continuing the line that was barely hinted at on The Curse and had very much solidi­fied with Panic, Ghosts Of Download is almost completely dependent on electronics; in genrist terms, it is one of those «electropop» records (I believe that «techno» is now considered uncool) that trade live instrumentation for programmed loops and beats because it shows how modern, trendy, and advanced you are (well, at least it used to — I am not that sure about the situation as of 2014). Not surprisingly, upon first listen I hated it with all the instinctive passion I could muster: everything sounded tasteless, stupid, and annoying to the max.

As the first nasty impressions clear away, though, I have to admit that the songs here are not really «bad» as such. The lyrics, the basic melodic hooks, the relative levels of complexity and diversity — a lot of work, and perhaps even a little inspiration, must have certainly been involved in the construction of the album. At the very least, it is incomparably more interesting than, say, Britney Spears' Femme Fatale, just as an example off the top of my head — even though it is rather a sad state of affairs when you find yourself inclined to draw a comparison between Blondie and Britney Spears in the first place.

Again, most of the songs feature outside songwriters, although either Harry or Stein or, usually, both of them, share the credits with outsiders. There are also plenty of guest appearances by trendy hip-hop, R&B, and LGBT people (Los Rakas, Miss Guy, Beth Ditto — thank you, Ms. Harrie, for introducing us to so many here-today-gone-tomorrow personalities!), which some­times makes sense (ʽA Rose By Any Nameʼ, featuring Beth Ditto, is a pro-gay anthem) and sometimes does not (the Spanish rap on ʽI Screwed Upʼ feels quite out of place to me), but, in any case, they are not there to make or not to make sense, but to establish a link between the older and the newer generations. Do they? Perhaps they do — the only problem is, in 50 years people will still be returning to those Blondie albums, but whether they will still be interested in Los Rakas seems much more questionable to me.

Only one tune on the entire record feels completely «authentic» to me: ʽWinterʼ, relatively free of the electronic coating, is a mid-tempo introspective rocker with Harrie's vocals mixed properly upfront and moving gracefully up the scale from verse to bridge to chorus as she picks on some poor soul for being too cold. It was not a single, it did not get any airplay, it does not feature any guest stars or particularly noticeable gimmicks, but to me, it feels like the absolute best that Ghosts Of Download have to offer me.

Still, I have no intentions of badmouthing the rest of the songs: I just don't feel like talking about them. Many of them do have the «Blondie sneer» alright, and after two or three listens, most of the choruses get properly stuck in your head — but I do not feel the ability to connect to these not-too-inventive electronic grooves. Perhaps they have been regretting, through all these years, about having disbanded way too early in the Eighties to give the world a proper synth-pop album, and now seek that extra profit, by way of the «Eighties' nostalgia wave» that seems to have swept over the population and still not dissipated? If so, how wonderful it is that they had missed that window — first, reunion albums are always easier to ignore than non-reunion albums, second, at least Ghosts has the added benefits of improved technology and a more complexly layered approach to integrating electronics with real instruments. For instance, ʽI Want To Drag You Aroundʼ has some sitars interacting with the shit-synths — probably synthesized as well, but if they went synth-pop in the Eighties, there would hardly have been a sitar break on this song at all.

Their retro kick still occasionally flares up in the strangest places: for instance, there is a long, multi-part version of the old hit ʽRelaxʼ (Frankie Goes To Hollywood!) — more famous for its controversial, free-all-inhibitions music video, if I remember right, than anything else. But musi­cally, the song is so trivial and repetitive (I'd even say «manipulative» if there was anything to manipulate) that the purpose of reviving it escapes me. Unless, of course, it is accompanied by a video of Chris Stein and Matt Katz-Bohen engaging in simulated anal sex, while a leather-clad Harrie puts the whip to both ("relax, don't do it, when you wanna come" is a pretty good tagline for such a special occasion).

On the whole, not even the hooks will prevent me from a thumbs down here. Fact is, I have always loved my Blondie for their moods — punkish and arrogant, sarcastically sexy, romanti­cally gloomy, whatever — and Ghosts Of Download have too much of a plastic coating to re­veal those moods to me. They are there, but you have to «tolerate» many elements of the production in order to enjoy them properly — elements that add nothing of significance and are really only there so that the band members can point to them and state, «see, we are not old farts, and we have some documental evidence for that». But really, Debbie and Chris, you do not need to take lessons from Lady Gaga to prove that you're still savvy about the 21st century. There's plenty of better teachers around, honest. Provided you need teachers in the first place. 

Blondie: Panic Of Girls

BLONDIE: PANIC OF GIRLS (2011)

1) D-Day; 2) What I Heard; 3) Mother; 4) The End The End; 5) Girlie Girlie; 6) Love Doesn't Frighten Me; 7) Words In My Mouth; 8) Sunday Smile; 9) Wipe Off My Sweat; 10) Le Bleu; 11) China Shoes.

Another chapter in the Book of the Curse of Blondie, and a confusing one — I am still not quite sure whether Panic Of Girls can be called a proper Blondie record. It comes together with a major loss in the Blondie camp: Jim Destri, who left the revamped band soon after The Curse Of Blondie due to personal problems. In his place, we have a totally new, young, trendy, flashy keyboard player (even his name, Matt Katz-Bohen, implies flashy-trendy), so seriously deter­mined to put his own stamp on this band and bring them up to date in the digital age that I would be surprised it did not come to blows with Chris Stein, had I not known that Stein actually appro­ves of the transition just as much as Debbie does.

More importantly, look at the credits: only one song out of eleven is credited exclusively to real Blondie members (Harry / Stein), and, not surprisingly, the album-closing ʽChina Shoesʼ is the only song that does sound like real Blondie — a dark, distorted ballad with that fabulous mix of playfulness and tragedy that used to grace tracks like ʽAngels On The Balconyʼ, though taken here at a slower, more thoughtful tempo and tied to a grumbly-grungy rhythm track that would have made Lou Reed proud.

Most of the other songs, however, try too hard to give Blondie that new look — and not a very good look: Katz-Bohen and producer Jeff Saltzman are helping them to turn into a fashionable, glitzy outfit, relying on stereotypical dance-pop electronics to keep the crowds interested. Some­times, when the approach is a compromise between the old and the new, the results are not that bad: ʽMotherʼ, co-written by Debbie with early producer Kato Khandwala, has a heart-tugging chorus that overrides all the silly electronics — the song is really a poignant «anti-nostalgic» look at the singer's past ("in the patent leather life I was foolish you were right...") and its frantic tempo and tenseness corresponds perfectly well to the singer's desperation at having missed something important and unrecoverable.

On the other hand, when they go all the way, the results can be drastic — as is the case with ʽWipe Off My Sweatʼ, which is simply the worst song ever released under the Blondie moniker. Trying to imagine that it is just a tongue-in-cheek parody on neo-Latin dance schlock (everything from J-Lo to Shakira) does not alleviate the pain — the synthesized rumba rhythms are vomit-worthy and Debbie sounds like a clinical idiot throughout (rather a normal thing for the garbage pop of today, but up to now, this band has always managed to avoid garbage — why stick their noses right in the middle of the trash heap now?). Other Katz-Bohen creations, like ʽWhat I Heardʼ, are not as directly annoying, perhaps, but I do not need my Blondie sounding like Katy Perry any more than I need them sounding like Shakira.

They do try to conform to lots of things at the same time, so that the reactions are always diffe­rent: for instance, they cover a recent Beirut tune (ʽSunday Smileʼ), which you will like if you like Beirut, but happen to have an alergy to Zach Condon's bleating voice — not only is the spirit of the brassy original preserved fairly well, but it suddenly reveals an eerie resemblance to the old spirit of ʽThe Tide Is Highʼ (talk about generational links and all that). The cooperation with songwriter / producer / universal artist Barb Morrison results in ʽWords In My Mouthʼ, one of the more guitar-oriented songs on the album, hard to categorize (blues-rock rhythm guitar + adult contemporary synths + aggressive character-assassinating lyrics = ?), though also somewhat hard to memorize due to the lack of outright hooks. And then there's Debbie's fascination with French pop (ʽLe Bleuʼ) — her singing in French has not much improved since the days of ʽDenis Denisʼ, but it does come as a major relief after her singing in Spanish on ʽWipe Off My Sweatʼ.

All in all, this is not an «awful» record as such — inconsistent, yes, and pandering way too much to mainstream pop standards of 2011 (which is way more artistically suicidal than pandering to mainstream pop standards of 1978-1979, as far as my opinion is concerned), but not uninteresting either from a culturological point of view (it is instructive to observe and analyze the many ways in which they try to chameleonize themselves) or from a Blondie-centered point of view, because songs like ʽMotherʼ, ʽWords In My Mouthʼ, and even that obscure old Sophia George cover (ʽGirlie Girlieʼ), dug out from the depths of 1985, are still very much Debbie Harry-esque. So, tread with care, but do not ignore completely — they do not yet hit pop bottom here.

Blondie: The Curse Of Blondie

BLONDIE: THE CURSE OF BLONDIE (2003)

1) Shakedown; 2) Good Boys; 3) Undone; 4) Golden Rod; 5) Rules For Living; 6) Background Melody; 7) Magic (Asadoya Yunta); 8) End To End; 9) Hello Joe; 10) The Tingler; 11) Last One In The World; 12) Diamond Bridge; 13) Desire Brings Me Back; 14) Songs Of Love.

Everybody knows what the real «curse of Blondie» is, and has always been: being mistaken for «Blondie», a male-oriented post-Marilyn, pre-Madonna pop factory churning out Viagra substi­tutes à la ʽHeart Of Glassʼ. Small wonder, then, that in the 21st century the curse gets stronger than ever — everybody needs that kind of «Blondie» when she's in her twenties or even thirties, but now that she is pushing sixty, you'd almost be getting into some sort of Harold And Maude situation, and not that there's anything wrong with that, but... well... you know...

...anyway, the title of the album seems to reflect irony, but it wouldn't hurt if they'd added, some­where in minuscule letters at least, «getting over...», because this is exactly what they are trying to do here. The only improvement of this album over No Exit is that, while some of the songs still reflect the old Blondie style, The Curse Of Blondie no longer toys with sexual imagery at all: there is nothing like ʽMariaʼ or ʽHappy Dogʼ or, thank God, ʽBoom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Roomʼ on this record. The lyrical and emotional tones are far more serious and, crucially, far more in line with the age-induced changes in Debbie's voice: no cognitive dissonance for me this time while undergoing the influence of her vocal timbre.

The flaws of this record, unfortunately, are very much in your face just as well. First and fore­most, it is overlong: simply put, they did not have enough songs to fill up the space of 60 minutes, yet, for some reason, decided to do it anyway and stretched most of the compositions out to totally unreasonable lengths. Basically, this is a set of 14 mediocre-to-good three-minute pop songs that seem to overrate themselves: 60 - (14×3) means that for about 18 minutes you will, most probably, be bored stiff out of your mind. Second, there is way too much emphasis on «sounding contemporary»: the lead (and only) single from the album, ʽGood Boysʼ, was strictly in the electronic dance-pop vein, and there are quite a bit more «commercial» throwaways like these on the album. Whatever the situation, Blondie has always been a guitar-based band, and trying to cross over thus late in their career will almost inevitably lead to embarrassments — and it does, even despite the fact that ʽGood Boysʼ has a catchy chorus.

And yet, despite the fact that it is so uneven, The Curse Of Blondie still contains a few melodic surprises and harmonic joys — too bad that you have to filter them out, but let me try and name a few, as a small aid. ʽGolden Rodʼ is a fine guitar pop song, on which they remember the old wailing Fripp/Belew lead tones, introduce a little bit of sped-up droning into the melody to make the atmosphere more scary, throw in a Patti Smith-like mid-section (Debbie even sounds like Patti when she is singing "my reaction, what's gonna happen, gets no help from me"), and com­plete the whole thing with lyrics that turn it into a thinly veiled anti-drug statement (or at least, that's how all these lines like "mother says it's just a weed" read out to me).

Later on, they do a fine job saddling Japanese pop influences on ʽMagicʼ — actually, an electric arrangement of a traditional Okinawan folk song (ʽAsadoya Yuntaʼ) where a multi-tracked Debbie sounds well in line with a high-pitched female Japanese choir, and is also well aided by psychedelic backward-recorded guitar solos: nothing earth-shaking, but a little tender innocence well integrated with a little bit of studio magic can sometimes go a long way. Perhaps it is not «true Blondie», but in 2003, it is certainly truer Blondie than ʽMariaʼ — besides, «true Blondie» has always been about reaching out into the unknown, so Okinawan folk music ties in pretty well into that category.

The band shows that they can still bulge those muscles, too, with a hard rock anthem that carries plenty of grit and desperation — ʽLast One In The Worldʼ — unfortunately, marred again with piss-poor production, flattening out the guitars and cluttering the mix with unnecessary extra layers of percussion and keyboards, but essentially a good song all the same. Finally, ʽSongs Of Loveʼ, though drastically overlong, is a wonderfully moody folk-jazzy conclusion, essentially in the «late night» vein, but with jangling guitars and pulsating «astral» electronic keyboards instead of the usual piano-and-bass accompaniment associated with such songs. Although Debbie does not have the proper voice for this (we'd rather need a Billie Holiday here, or at least some of the other old school jazz divas), she still does what she can, and sounds more convincing as a ro­mantic crooner than a sexy feline, forever stuck in kittenhood.

Much of the rest is hit-and-miss, as subjective as these judgements are: for instance, I remain completely unmoved by ʽHello Joeʼ, the band's allegedly heartfelt tribute to their long-term New York pal Joey Ramone — not only does the song's genre (a light acoustic pop-rocker) have no relation whatsoever to the Ramones, but even the song per se is melodically way too simplistic for the usual Blondie standards, as if they thought that a lyrical reference to hey-ho-let's-go would suffice in making the song work. More seriously and generally, the rhythm guitar parts on the album suck more often than not (overprocessed, overcompressed, the usual stuff), and the key­boards too often sound like a novice, frosted out after twenty years of repose and frantically trying to «catch up» with the hottest trends.

On the whole, though, still a thumbs up here rather than the dustbin treatment: I like the attitude, the maturity, the still-not-too-bad songwriting, the way they sometimes (alas, not too often) suc­ceed in overcoming their disadvantages in the new age, and just the basic fact that they have managed to avoid turning into complete self-parodies — one true sign of a great band, actually (retaining self-control and adequacy even after the cutting edge has long since been passed). And if somebody trimmed this whole thing down to reasonable length, re-mixed and re-produced most of the songs, and erased all their «intentional modernity» impulses, then it might have been a very strong thumbs up, for all I know.

As it is — who knows, maybe that curse of Blondie does exist, after all, and is way different from the way I have described it? For instance: «the curse of Blondie is that they will never be able to release a fully satisfactory record in the 21st century»... nah, too obvious. «The curse of Blondie is that they will never be able to free themselves from the illusion of being obliged to their fans to release superficially commercial singles, instead of just being true to their musical hearts». Too pretentious. «The curse of Blondie is... what kind of a stupid band calls itself Blondie, anyway?» Okay, never mind. Curtains, please.

Blondie: Live

BLONDIE: LIVE (1999)

1) Dreaming; 2) Hanging On The Telephone; 3) Screaming Skin; 4) Atomic; 5) Forgive And Forget; 6) The Tide Is High; 7) Shayla; 8) Sunday Girl; 9) Maria; 10) Call Me; 11) Under The Gun; 12) Rapture; 13) Rip Her To Shreds; 14) X Offender; 15) No Exit; 16) Heart Of Glass; 17*) One Way Or Another.

While in their prime, Blondie never released a live album — the «cult of the live album», so sternly supported on the prog-rock and hard-rock circuits, hardly existed at all among the punk and New Wave outfits of the late 1970s (not that there weren't exceptions, and for some bands, like Talking Heads, the art of live performance was every bit as essential to their reputation as their studio output). Bootlegs and scattered semi-official archival releases show that this was rather imprudent — Blondie could be quite an awesome live band, benefiting both from the in­strumental skills of its members (Clem Burke's drumming, for instance) and their creativity on­stage, experimenting with their own material as well as covering other great artists; not always successfully — their take on Bowie's ʽHeroesʼ, for instance, bordered on the dreadful — but when it comes to live playing, the «win some lose some» principle is always preferable to «play it safe and sound», and they practiced it regularly.

In the light of this, the band's decision to finally come out with their first proper live album (and live DVD as well) in the middle of their surprising comeback has to be qualified as a «cash-in». With ʽMariaʼ riding on top of the charts, sales for No Exit showing a positive balance, and the band's live shows receiving a warm welcome from fans — why not a live album to prop up the comeback and keep the news flowing? They wouldn't exactly be rushing in to write up and record a new bunch of original songs, anyway, so a live LP would be just fine.

Five out of sixteen songs on the recorded setlist are from No Exit, demonstrating that the album was more than just an excuse for the old guys and girls to get together — however, most fans would naturally be more interested in whether they still have it as far as the golden oldies are concerned. As you can easily see from the tracklist, they offer a rather predictable, but represen­tative retrospective, covering all the records except for The Hunter (understandable) and Plastic Letters (inexcusable — not even ʽDenis Denisʼ? come on now, that was a hit, wasn't it?), but usually concentrating on commercially successful radio standards.

Equally predictably, I would have no problems whatsoever with these performances — they sound sufficiently tight and energetic to ward off technical criticism — if it were not for the un­fortunate demise of Debbie Harry's voice as a magical device of the Viagra variety, and its rebirth as a dull chunk of homeopathic placebo; meaning that every now and then, you are likely to come across some dryly admiring statement like «Ms. Harry's voice, contrary to malicious rumors, is in surprisingly fine form». She is certainly more alive than dead, and she does not hit many bum notes, or flub the lyrics, or mix up the moods — it's just that there is no more magic in that voice, period. So much for drinking, smoking, and hanging out with those types from Chic.

In stark contrast with their struggling vocalist, the band's instrumentalists perform their required push-ups admirably. Mr. Burke is beyond reproach — just listen to his drumming alone saving ʽScreaming Skinʼ from perishing under its own five-and-a-half-minute repetitiveness, as his rolls and fills become the most individualistic and expressive part of the performance. And yes, that fabulous coda to ʽHeart Of Glassʼ is retained essentially intact, plus there is an extra coda where he gets to be Keith Moon for about thirty seconds (and I am being serious — had he really wan­ted to, he could have become the most authentic Keith Moon impersonator in the world, he can get that close to invoking Moonie's spirit). Paul Carbonara, standing in for Frank Infante on lead guitar, slavishly reproduces all the original parts with total success, and session player Leigh Foxx on bass gets a chance to shine on ʽAtomicʼ, which is here stripped of its disco gloss and made to sound more like a trance-inducing psychedelic dance extravaganza (which it might have been from the very start if not for the unfortunate circumstance of being recorded at the height of the disco era). Meanwhile, the «angry» songs like ʽRip Her To Shredsʼ receive heavier arrange­ments, with thicker, more distorted guitar tones that you'd probably expect in the post-grunge / alt-rock era — quite fine with me when you're talking live performance.

Ultimately, the further you can get away from the idea of «Blondie» as a backing band for the seductive pop charm of Debbie Harry and the nearer you can move towards the idea of «Blondie» as a musical band, period, the more prepared you will be to enjoy Live as a bona fide reflection of a tight, crunchy, sweaty musical show. It does have the benefit of finer production than any archival release from the old days, as well as the benefit of a strong, mostly filler-free setlist (al­though I'd much rather hear them do ʽNothing Is Real But The Girlʼ and ʽHappy Dogʼ than ʽFor­give And Forgetʼ and ʽNo Exitʼ), and do not be too offput by my putting down Debbie's vocal transformation — in the end, it's not that bad to have your attention transferred from front-lady to back-gentlemen. Who knows, they may have been waiting for this to happen for the previous 25 years, so why wouldn't we want to oblige them?

Blondie: No Exit

BLONDIE: NO EXIT (1999)

1) Screaming Skin; 2) Forgive And Forget; 3) Maria; 4) No Exit; 5) Double Take; 6) Nothing Is Real But The Girl; 7) Boom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Room; 8) Night Wind Sent; 9) Under The Gun; 10) Out In The Streets; 11) Happy Dog; 12) The Dream's Lost On Me; 13) Divine; 14) Dig Up The Conjo.

I must confess that, to my ears, the worst thing about post-reunion Blondie is not the quality of the music (inconsistent, but can be gotten used to), not the gloss of the production (they'd turned into a «gloss-oriented» band as early as 1978), not the questionability of the reunion itself (in an age that has essentially stopped producing musical revolutions, veteran reunions should be valued every bit as high as aspiring «new» bands — and, actually, they are) — the saddest thing is the deterioration of Debbie Harry's voice, which is just... well, sad.

I mean, we all age, and we all have to come to terms with the fact that only singers like Tom Waits gain in awesomeness with aging, but some of us age worse than others, and some of us adjust to aging worse than others. In those 17 years that separate The Hunter from No Exit, as one can actually witness in more detail by scrutinizing Debbie's solo career, her voice has sunk, losing a very important part of its higher range and acquiring a late-age «breathiness» — which certainly does not prevent the singer from singing on key, or even singing reasonably well, but a huge chunk of the original appeal was in the sexiness, and this loss makes it painfully obvious that here, in 1999, is a performer struggling to be «sexy», where in the past it all came so natu­rally. An aging diva throwing a pointless challenge to the unyielding hand of time.

Again, this is a problem that could be circumvented if they tried to make the music suitably dif­ferent (Marianne Faithfull's Broken English immediately comes to mind under such circum­stances) — but nooooo, they are Blondie, they are the supreme royalty of 1970s pop music and they want it to stay that way, besides, they never really fell apart, they just took a long break, right? They want to be picking up from exactly where they left with The Hunter, no, with Auto­american, because The Hunter was a closing-gap throwaway piece. They want to make a true Blondie album. Loud, arrogant, stylistically diverse, only technically-formally modernized for the new age, but otherwise true to the band's essence.

In many ways, they are still qualified. Not all of the old guys are aboard for the continuation of the ride (Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante either refused to take part or were not involved at all, and even tried to sue the others for using the «Blondie» tag — honestly, though, I don't think it makes much sense to sue Debbie Harry for the use of the word «Blondie», not until she dyes her hair pitch black), but Chris Stein, Jim Destri, and Clem Burke are, and they can still play all their instruments as good as new, and they can still write songs in different styles, covering the usual eclectic grounds: straightforward old school pop rock, mostly, but extending their reach to areas both older than that (lounge jazz and even country-pop) and younger than that (some adult con­temporary, some hip-hop).

Yet I have never been properly fascinated by ʽMariaʼ, the big hit single from the album that had the power to throw the band into the spotlight once again — just how many comebacks from veteran bands are accompanied with a #1 single? — but while the melody is undoubtedly catchy and infectious, the «joyful» atmosphere of the song is completely spoiled for me by Debbie's «mother­ly» tone. The tune's proper intention might simply be to describe the visionary beauty of an unnamed protagonist, but whenever the singer inquires "don't you wanna take her? wanna make her all your own?", I cannot help picturing Debbie Harry as the imposing, self-confident matron in a whorehouse, offering us some appetizing love for sale. Where this «sexiness» thing worked like a charm circa 1976-78, this time there is some sort of awful mismatch between voice, lyrics, and melody that harshly stings the brain on an instinctive level. Good pop song, sure, but it simply should be sung by somebody else.

At this point, I'd say Debbie comes off much better when she is singing sad songs rather than happy ones — which is why I much prefer the second single, ʽNothing Is Real But The Girlʼ. It is just as old-school-catchy as ʽMariaʼ, every single bit, but it has a deeply melancholic spirit in­stead, with vocal and instrumental melody alike targeted at «ice» rather than «fire», and in this case, the changes in Debbie's voice actually work to her advantage. Likewise, she's still great when singing songs of defiance and self-confidence — the country waltz ʽThe Dream's Lost On Meʼ, as much as I am always skeptical of country waltzes, actually turns out to be the record's most arrogant, gravity-defying number: the lady's "I come out shootin' when trouble comes kno­ckin', I greet bad news by sending it walkin'" sounds totally believable, and if you thought that the last thing you'd ever want to see was a Debbie Harry in a Nashville mood, you might rethink that thought upon hearing the song — regular, conformist, conventional country it ain't.

Some of the «foxy» songs are so cool anyway that the voice factor does not bother me too much — ʽHappy Dogʼ, for instance, a swaggery syncopated blues-rocker with awesome triple-guitar interplay (swampy slide tone + dry distorted «woman tone» + funky rhythm = pure awesomeness indeed!), feels a bit uneasy when she sings "I wanna wag for you baby", and the Stooges re­ference ("I wanna be your dog") is way too obvious, but the musical arrangement is just so juicy that I always want to look past the voice, to where those guitars are battling each other (way to go, Chris Stein and session guy Paul Carbonara). On the other hand, when she invites you to go ʽBoom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Roomʼ (the lounge jazz song), the results are once again... nervous, to put it mildly.

But anyway, personal impressions aside, a more objective judgement would say that the music on No Exit, as a rule, is quite good. Without pretending to any particular «innovations» (except on the title track, where they try to fuse Toccata In D Minor with nu-metal and a rap part from Coolio — sounds as bizarre as it reads, yes, but it might get your attention), the tracks, one by one, deliver instrumental and vocal hooks, moods, and textures. And this is not really a «Blon­die In The 1990s» album — it's just a Blonide album, period. A few of the tracks are fillerish, and the cover of the Shangri-La's ʽOut In The Streetsʼ (a song they'd originally recorded as early as 1975, so this is hyper-nostalgia catching up) is also unnecessary, and the grotesque ska pumping of ʽScreaming Skinʼ lasts about two minutes longer than it should, but leave it to Blondie to end the album on a fascinating mix of tribal music, pop melodies, and Eastern psychedelia and make you suspect that this band still «matters», after all these years (ʽDig Up The Conjoʼ — an unsuspected tribute to ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ, perhaps?).

In fact, I would go as far as state that Harry's, Stein's, and Destri's songwriting talents, on the whole, have managed to retain all of their original sharpness — a rare case for a comeback, and the thumbs up rating is only slightly marred by the fact that, well, they are not young any more, yet they still make music predominantly targeted at a young audience, or, perhaps, at their old audi­ence who want to feel themselves as young as the band members do. Nothing illegitimate or immoral about that, just a tiny whiff of routine fakery that I am sure we can all live with. 

Blondie: The Hunter

BLONDIE: THE HUNTER (1982)

1) Orchid Club; 2) Island Of Lost Souls; 3) Dragonfly; 4) For Your Eyes Only; 5) The Beast; 6) War Child; 7) Little Caesar; 8) Danceway; 9) (Can I) Find The Right Words (To Say); 10) English Boys; 11) The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game.

Blondie's last album (before the reunion) continuously gets a very bad rap from fans and critics alike, and I am pretty sure that a lot of this has to do with Debbie's wig on the front cover (yes, please relax, that is not real hair, she would'nt have had enough time to grow so much since the cover of Autoamerican) — everything about that front cover screams Eighties, and then so does the music, and not altogether in a good way, you understand.

Objectivity seems to be on the fans' and critics' side, too: nobody wanted all that much to do the album, plagued as the band was with all sorts of personal troubles (not the least of which were Chris Stein's health problems), but they were still contractually obligated to get one more record out to Chrysalis, so, almost over their dead bodies, they had to get back to the studio, summon Mike Chapman to the rescue, and deliver something as «contemporary» and «relevant» as that trashy collective sci-fi look on the front sleeve.

On its own, The Hunter is indeed rather disastrous. Too many synthesizers, too much modernis­tic production, too many moments of meandering mushiness weighted against too few song­writing ideas. In the context of Blondie's usual output, it looks even worse — the more you think about this being the same band that did ʽOne Way Or Anotherʼ or ʽDreamingʼ just a few years ago, the easier that old cliché about the fall of the once mighty springs to mind. However, in the context of «Blondie's age curve» — the childhood of Blondie, the adolescence of Plastic Letters, the glorious youth of Parallel Lines, the ripe maturity of Eat To The Beat, the woe-from-wit old age premonitions of Autoamerican — the last record logically corresponds to respectable seni­lity, with a pessimistic nudge to it, and that is exactly the kind of expectation I have for it, and I am not at all being disappointed.

The Hunter is a moody, dark, dense album, with a bit of a «sonic jungle» feel to it, and a very natural one — you can easily tell things were not well, and there are no songs here that would try and mask this, presenting the band as something that they were not, at the time. One possible exception is ʽIsland Of Lost Soulsʼ, a superficially «happy» calypso dance tune that was released as a single, because, you know, it's frickin' Blondie, they need a «happy» single for all the happy people out there. Never mind that on the cover of the single they look just as gloomy and depres­sed as on the cover of the album (and Debbie sports a different wig), the single has to appeal to the average idiot dancer, whatever the problems. If you read deeply into the lyrics, you will see that they represent a troubled state of mind ("In Babylon / On the boulevard of broken dreams / My will power at the lowest ebb..."), but that percussion and that friendly brass section and the rambunctious whoop-whooping, that'll get you going anyway.

Outside of that, though, it is one picture of nightmarish decadence or anti-utopian futurism after another. On ʽOrchid Clubʼ, Debbie is cooing "where are you, where are you?" from under a dense thicket of tribal percussion, church-organ-imitating synthesizers, and groaning Fripp-style guitars; this is the first time we see the band so deeply depressed. ʽDragonflyʼ is a New Romantic-era epic rocker about some sort of futuristic drag race, with some clever guitar interplay between Chris Stein and Frank Infante as they impersonate the sci-fi racers, although the song is quite clearly stretched way beyond rational limits. And ʽFor Your Eyes Onlyʼ, following in the steps of Alice Cooper's ʽMan With The Golden Gunʼ, joins the league of «Bond Themes Rejected for Being Too Scary for the Average Idiot Viewer /Courtesy of Motion Picture Association's Opinion/» — not that it is very scary or anything, but its life-defying moody arrogance and lack of lyrical trans­parency do make it a rather suspicious choice for inclusion in the Bond spectacle.

All these songs really have their moments, but the two definite highlights on the album are ʽWar­childʼ and ʽEnglish Boysʼ — autobiographical tunes that might have felt more at home on any of Harry's solo albums, but ultimately, who cares? ʽEnglish Boysʼ, a nostalgic mind trip back into Debbie's adolescence, is simple, sweet, and tender, with a totally endearing chorus ("does it feel the same to you?..." is Debbie at her most seductively sentimental), whereas ʽWar Childʼ, pinned to a futuristic synth loop and electropop dance groove, turns to anger and self-defense as its basic emotional undercurrent — "I'm a war child, I'm a war baby / And that's the difference between you and me", as performed by the 1945-born Debbie Harry, sounds as authentic as it could have sounded in any type of heated argument between the protagonist and her imaginary antagonists (including, as the lyrics unflinchingly suggest, fans of the Khmer Rouge and «PLO lovers courting after the curfew» who «have the West Bank blues» — oh, what is this, rightist senti­ments in one of America's most progressive bands? crucify 'em!).

Additionally, the album ends on a moodier-than-moodiness-itself cover version of the Marve­lettes' ʽThe Hunter Gets Captured By The Gameʼ — as Blondie's final song for the next two de­cades, I'd like, of course, to take it double-metaphorically, reflecting not merely the imaginary story of a vamp falling in love with her victim, but the whole story of Blondie, a band catapulted by fate into an unlikely whirlwind of commercial success and public acclaim, and ultimately de­stroyed by their very own fortune. Maybe they had that additional meaning, too, which is why the song sounds so sad and poignant, clearly more important here to Debbie than it ever was for the Marvelettes themselves, or Smokey Robinson, who never dreamed about any such third layer of semantics when he wrote it.

Of course, there are throwaway songs here as well, like ʽThe Beastʼ or ʽDancewayʼ, of which I cannot tell you anything interesting, except that they, too, good or bad, are permeated with a sense of dreariness, tiredness, and uncertainty of where to go from here. This «dark gray» atmo­sphere, best correlated with some ugly late autumnal panorama of dirty skies and sickly slushy rain, is, I think, what turns people off this record even more than its lack of quality melodies. But in reality this musical ugliness has every reason to exist alongside the colorful rainbows of Blon­die's past — in fact, has a somewhat perversely thrilling reason to exist that-a-way — and there are still enough quality melodies here to guarantee a low, but honest thumbs up from me, im­plying that the original Blondie were so talented that they never really made a bad record per se, they just made a final one that seriously smells of antidepressants. And do not even try judging it objectively before you hit your midlife crisis or something like that.

Blondie: Autoamerican

BLONDIE: AUTOAMERICAN (1980)

1) Europa; 2) Live It Up; 3) Here's Looking At You; 4) The Tide Is High; 5) Angels On The Balcony; 6) Go Through It; 7) Do The Dark; 8) Rapture; 9) Faces; 10) T-Birds; 11) Walk Like Me; 12) Follow Me; 13*) Call Me; 14*) Suzy & Jeffrey.

Despite selling even stronger than Eat To The Beat and yielding at least one more iconic Blondie single in ʽRaptureʼ, the band's fifth album was greeted rather coldly by the press — and, in retrospect, seems to have acquired a rather suspicious reputation. Scan the average bunch of people's reactions on the Internet and, even without hearing the album, you will put together a clear picture: on Autoamerican, Blondie try to bite off more than they can chew, going off in a million different directions, but writing dull, bland songs in each one. The fun is gone, replaced by pretense and ambition. This is not the Blondie we used to know and like.

Indeed, it does seem as if something had happened. Judgemental statements aside, Autoamerican is a total downer of an album — in the place of exuberance, arrogance, bright humor, and de­layed-teenage happiness (some of which was still in evidence on Eat To The Beat) comes a record whose brief moments of fun-fun-fun are so brief indeed, they almost seem like ironic auto-send-ups in the overall context. They say sometimes that one of the album's pervasive subjects is cars (the title, the spoken bits in ʽEuropaʼ, ʽT-Birdsʼ, the eating cars bit in ʽRaptureʼ), but that looks more like a coincidence to me. What is really pervasive is an overall sense of gloom; not panick or depression as such, more like a dark, disturbing premonition of some hard times to come. If there is one title here that is better suited for the choice of album title, it is ʽDo The Darkʼ — much more telling than Autoamerican, which really says nothing.

Looking at the record this way, as a sort of «Blondie gets sick» signal, is much better than just coming to it in search of another bunch of stellar pop tunes à la ʽDreamingʼ or ʽOne Way Or Anotherʼ. Diversity, as such, has never been this band's enemy: they were exploring different musical styles as early as in 1976, and if there is a little more experimentation here than usual, why should that be a problem? ʽEuropaʼ, the odd neo-classical instrumental that opens the album, will never be deemed a self-standing masterpiece, but it isn't meant to — it simply provides a suitably moody grand opening for the record. In the short run, it was a miscalculation to place it right at the start: after ʽHangin' On The Telephoneʼ and ʽDreamingʼ as classic upbeat openings, people were certainly not prepared to encounter those morose, slightly dissonant strings and that Pink Floydian guitar riff. But today, we are prepared.

The album's centerpiece is ʽRaptureʼ, which we all know, of course, as (a) one of the first exam­ples of rapping recorded by a white artist and (b) that song about the man from Mars who keeps on eating cars and when he's through with cars he's eating bars. What sometimes escapes our attention is the inherent bitterness in the song — no signs of delight or giddiness or happiness, and a lot of mock-irony that actually overwhelms and downplays the absurdity of the rapped lyrics. The song does not celebrate club life; its robotic pulsation and somnambulant vocals play up its dehumanizing aspects rather than anything else. ʽAtomicʼ — now that was a happy disco song. ʽRaptureʼ is dark, creepy, and much closer in spirit to ʽMidnight Ramblerʼ (come to think of it, the man from Mars might just be a different incarnation of the midnight rambler); and when Debbie seductively croons out "...in raaaaaptuuure..." at the end of the sung part, she really truly sounds like an angel. The death angel, that is.

Speaking of angels, ʽAngels On The Balconyʼ, written by Destri, may actually be the best song on the album — another gloomy, smoky pop song that tries to become more cheerful in the bridge section ("they can still see him singing on the corner...") but fails. Empty theater, after­glow, cold outside, fading memories, ghostly lowered voice, cold backing synthesizers, more Bauhaus than Blondie, but with much more «natural» production. The moderately fast tempo and powerful in-between-verse riff suggest that life is still going on, but there's no getting away from past shadows and closet skeletons, want it or not.

Even when they go retro-all-the-way on our asses and toss off a light, 1920s-influenced vaude­ville number (ʽHere's Looking At Youʼ), catchy as heck and almost hilariously authentically arranged, its mood and tone are still bitter (it's in the «drowning one's disillusionment and per­sonal grudges in a liquor glass» style of delivery). And then there is the gloomy danceable ʽLive It Upʼ ("your old lover's lying in the gutter"), the gloomy danceable ʽDo The Darkʼ (actually, it is one of the happiest songs on the album — using its darkness-evoking lyrics and snake-charming synth lines to titillate rather than to spook), the midnight jazz balladry of ʽFacesʼ, all drenched in some tragic nostalgia... need I continue?

Against this background, ʽThe Tide Is Highʼ, a cover of an old ska tune by The Paragons (here given a far more lush arrangement that almost turns it into a mariachi band tune), sticks out like a sore thumb. Since the people still loved their Blondie when she was happy much more than when she was feeling like shit, they had no problem pushing it all the way up to No. 1 (and, perhaps, subconsciously they were aided by the chorus line "I'm gonna be your number one" as well?), but it is not at all indicative of the overall atmosphere of the record. It's just that they needed a hit, and Mike Chapman obviously felt that the only surefire hit by Blondie is a happy hit, so here it is. It's a jolly good cover, too, but these days it feels a bit... slight, perhaps, against the general heavy weight of the record.

On the whole, I would go as far as agreeing that Autoamerican represents «the beginning of the end». This is an evolved band, one that has already tasted its best taste of happiness and success and is now embracing «post-maturity». This gloomy style does not come to them as naturally as the giddy style of their early records, but it isn't faked, either. The songwriting is kinda limp in places (ʽWalk Like Meʼ, for instance, sounds like a lifeless shadow of their once brashly arrogant approach), but more than half of the record is still comprised of great tunes — also, if you get the reissued remastered version, ʽCall Meʼ, the band's biggest hit single, is on there as well, one of the grandest songs of the disco-rock era, though, like all such specially commandeered songs (for the soundtrack of American Gigolo, in this case), it is rather faceless, though undeniably catchy. In any case, unlike the original band's last album, Autoamerican, whether you like it or not, is an integral and necessary-to-know part of the band's legacy. Personally, I am quite partial to its disgruntled spirit, and have no problem with a strong thumbs up rating — it's not my fault, and, come to think of it, it's not even their fault that somebody would categorically refuse to accept them in any mode other than «power pop», which this record does not even try to be. 

Blondie: Eat To The Beat

BLONDIE: EAT TO THE BEAT (1979)

1) Dreaming; 2) The Hardest Part; 3) Union City Blue; 4) Shayla; 5) Eat To The Beat; 6) Accidents Never Happen; 7) Die Young Stay Pretty; 8) Slow Motion; 9) Atomic; 10) Sound-A-Sleep; 11) Victor; 12) Living In The Real World; 13*) Die Young Stay Pretty (live); 14*) Seven Rooms Of Gloom (live); 15*) Heroes (live); 16*) Ring Of Fire (live).

When Blondie entered the studio to record Parallel Lines, they were a bunch of quirky, unpre­dictable proto-hipsters with relatively little knowledge of what it takes to be a world class star. When one year later they returned there to record the follow-up to Parallel Lines, they were a throng of Pop Gods, with Debbie Harry as Sex Symbol Supreme and the indisputable ruling Pop Queen of the Universe, whether they wanted to or not. And knowledge and acceptance of this is all over Eat To The Beat, which is both good and bad news.

The good news is that there are songs here that make me kowtow on an instinctive level. The opening track, ʽDreamingʼ, and ʽUnion City Blueʼ is what I'd call «regal pop» — grand, epic scale pop compositions, borrowing their attitude from Phil Spector, throwing in a pinch of Euro­pop, and tempering it all with classic, colorful, thick electric pop riffs. This is what ABBA would sound like if the production on their records owed more to rock'n'roll than to glossy «adult pop» (if you listen closely, you will hear that Debbie's vocal moves on the bridge section of ʽDrea­mingʼ are like 100% ABBA-esque in construction). More importantly, these are just gorgeous, dazzling micro-pop-symphonies, whose combination of a steady mid-fast-tempo with deep, bombastic production and a mighty, inspirational riff (with Debbie often singing in unison with it) makes the songs soar to high heaven — in terms of romance, this is no longer the purr of a teenage vixen, more like the sensual amorous fantasies of a mature woman. "I'd build a road in gold just to have some dreaming, dreaming is free" and "power, passion, plays a double hand" are two of the most memorable lines in pop music history (of course, only if you take them together with their musical history).

This newly found «regality», which they could do so well, goes hand in hand with «diversity»: if Parallel Lines did indeed put them on a sky-high pop pedestal, then it is only natural that they should aim for their own version of The White Album now. Thus, in addition to this «lush» pop-rock style, Eat To The Beat has its Bowie-influenced funk-pop (ʽThe Hardest Partʼ), more tra­ditional (for Blondie, that is) New Wave-style pop (ʽAccidents Never Happenʼ), reggae (ʽDie Young Stay Prettyʼ), more disco (ʽAtomicʼ), some basic rock'n'roll (ʽLiving In The Real Worldʼ), and even a waltzing lullaby (ʽSound-A-Sleepʼ). No heavy metal or Andean music, but I guess cautious Mike Chapman just wouldn't let them go for double album format.

Maybe he was right, too, because not all of this works. While Side A of the album is every bit as strong as everything they made and maybe even stronger, by the time we get to Side B they begin allowing themselves an occasional dud. The usual culprit is ʽAtomicʼ, a rather blatant attempt to capitalize on the success of ʽHeart Of Glassʼ by coming up with another disco hit — but this time around, they make the big mistake of not placing Debbie Harry at the center of it: instead, much of the song is instrumental, pinned to a repetitive riff and running out of ideas long before it fades out at the 4:30 mark. It's not a «bad» riff as such, but the principal difference is that ʽHeart Of Glassʼ was just a good, fun song that was able to benefit from a disco cloak, whereas ʽAtomicʼ sounds like it was specially pre-designed to provide basic entertainment for the dancefloor, and I have no idea why they decided to go that way in the first place. Ironically, Robert Fripp, who had earlier provided eerie guitar backing for ʽFade Away And Radiateʼ, was once again invited to guest star on ʽAtomicʼ — maybe they thought they could get him to recreate the effect he had on David Bowie's ʽHeroesʼ, but they couldn't. (To compensate, they did play ʽHeroesʼ with Robert Fripp at the Hammersmith Odeon concert in 1980, a track that is included in the bonus section of the remastered CD edition of Eat To The Beat).

The worst song on the album, though, is not ʽAtomicʼ, but rather ʽVictorʼ, a confused and confu­sing screamfest that really sounds like it was quickly thrown together at the last moment to fill up empty space — a practice that I could not accuse the band of up to now. (The title track, while also containing elements of chaotic hooliganry, is actually much more tight, and its humorous message, condensed in the ʽEat To The Beatʼ title, is reminiscent of the band's young and inno­cent days). This is the first sign to indicate that maybe things weren't really going all that well, and pointing to the soon-to-come creative exhaustion. But on here, it's more like an unfortunate accident, one of the few that does happen, despite us being told to the contrary (ʽAccidents Never Happenʼ, another fabulous pop rocker with Debbie at her most femme-fatale-like).

In case you thought ʽDreamingʼ and ʽUnion City Blueʼ were the only true highlights, I'd also like to single out ʽSlow Motionʼ — a perfectly spritely tune, all pins and needles from the rhythm section and the keyboards, and especially those "slow motion!... stop!... take me back!..." jolts from the background singers (including Liza Minnelli's sister Lorna Luft) that add such stark conclusiveness and arrogance to the song. And I'd also like to single out ʽThe Hardest Partʼ: wedged in between two of the lushest soundscapes ever is this mean, lean, punkish, hard-rocking tune about robbing an armored car (hey, a good enough return to the «musical situation» style of Plastic Letters — welcome back) that goes from screechy, ugly funk verse to an even sterner disco chorus where Nigel Harrison's bass appropriately sounds like a machine gun.

Ultimately, discounting the silly ʽVictorʼ and the rather poor sequencing of Side B (by all means, ʽSound-A-Sleepʼ should have been the last track, an appropriate wind-down after the disco heat of ʽAtomicʼ), Eat To The Beat is only a shade less consistent than Parallel Lines, representing the band at the peak of its «mainstream commercial» powers without compromising its playful and intelligent essence (well, maybe ʽAtomicʼ does compromise it a little). It is also notable for being one of the first, if not the first, album where each song was accompanied by its own video — a costly, but curious publicity act that is still fun to watch after all these years. Most impor­tantly, it is just another great lesson in how you can pass through the grinder of the music in­dustry and still end up with great melodies and cool meanings. Major thumbs up, of course.

Blondie: Parallel Lines

BLONDIE: PARALLEL LINES (1978)

1) Hanging On The Telephone; 2) One Way Or Another; 3) Picture This; 4) Fade Away And Radiate; 5) Pretty Baby; 6) I Know But I Don't Know; 7) 11:59; 8) Will Anything Happen?; 9) Sunday Girl; 10) Heart Of Glass; 11) I'm Gonna Love You Too; 12) Just Go Away; 13*) Once I Had A Love; 14*) Bang A Gong (Get It On) (live); 15*) I Know But I Don't Know (live); 16*) Hanging On The Telephone (live).

In which Blondie go professional, and now there is no turning back — no more «young and inno­cent days» for you once you've passed through the skilled hands of Mike Chapman, master of glossy candy packaging whose previous clients included Sweet, Smokie, Suzi Quatro, and various other acts, intensely groomed and pampered for stronger commercial effect (Sweet were actually the best of the lot — most of the rest were like 100% unlistenable). Blondie's manager convinced them to team up with Chapman, probably hoping that he would be able to hone their best pop instincts without making them completely reject their identity — and on the whole, he was right: Parallel Lines is very commercial, but it does not betray the general spirit that the band had concocted already with its very first songs.

Still, there may be such a thing as «too much perfection», and this complaint does apply to Parallel Lines, as the guys, the girl, and the glossy LA producer so ardently hunt for the ideal sound and forget about some of the band's legacy. Unlike Plastic Letters, Parallel Lines is all about the simple things — girl-and-guys relations, with gender roles accordingly reversed (Deb­bie as the hunter and guys as the game — hell, look at the album cover alone, where they all look like identical dorks and she looks ready to bitchslap you in a moment). That's all very well and suitable and Blondie-compatible, but I do miss all those stories of kung fu girls and giant ants and Red Square spies and youths nabbed as snipers. Where did they go? Well, it's not that easy to make hits out of such ideas, so let us turn to more basic hormonal stuff instead.

But how is it possible to resist temptation when the first two songs on the album are ʽHanging On The Telephoneʼ and ʽOne Way Or Anotherʼ — one of the fiercest, most stunning guitar-pop attacks on the senses since the days when the Beatles roamed the planet? Debbie's a little funny in her attempt to be as sexually aggressive as possible, even going all the way to gather a little phlegm so as to roar out certain lines in both of these songs like some thunder-and-lightning black diva à la Tina Turner — but we can forgive her, because on the whole, she is being very convincing about it (or «about It», to be more accurate. Or «about Id», to be more Freudist). And then there is the music — the mad rush simulation of ʽTelephoneʼ, a perfect musical equivalent of blood boiling, and the unforgettable guitar riff of ʽOne Wayʼ, apparently written by the band's bass player, Nigel Harrison. ʽOne Wayʼ may, in fact, be one of the greatest blends of a typically hard rock riff with a typically pop structure — and, accordingly, the greatest emulation of sexual aggression paired with «pretty looks». Madonna got nothing on this, not even close — then again, who'd ever write a riff like that for the likes of Madonna?

The greatness never stops coming, because ʽPicture Thisʼ, while playing for the third time in a row on the same ideas (if she ain't gonna get this one, she'll get that one, or that one, or that one over there...), adopts a slightly different approach — a bit more lyrical, only gradually revving itself into overdrive, and it is every bit as effective, because sometimes subtlety works better than a straightforward assault. I've never really understood the temporal connection of the lines "I will give you my finest hour..." (future tense) "...the one I spent watching you shower" (past tense), but what sort of a regular male could resist Debbie Harry purring so tenderly reminiscing about watching him shower? Oh, yeah, well, uhm, the melody's quite catchy too, I guess.

All of which brings us a little bit fast-forward-style to ʽHeart Of Glassʼ, a song that actually began life as ʽOnce I Had A Loveʼ way back in 1975 or so, and which Chapman, from its early syncopated funky beginnings, developed to immaculate disco gloss. In retrospect, the song pretty much destroyed Blondie's reputation — most people who «don't care all that much» probably only associate the band with this song now, and while it certainly does capture some of the essence of Blondie fairly well, there is no way it could make you understand the whole story, or at least prevent you from mistakenly putting Blondie in the same boat with Donna Summer or any of those gazillion Eurodisco bands. But in the general context of all things Blondie-related, ʽHeart Of Glassʼ is, of course, still a masterpiece.

One word of warning to the neophyte, though — do avoid the relatively crappy 5:50 «disco version» with which the bandits at Chrysalis had replaced the original 3:45 cut on quite a few reprints, starting with a vinyl pressing in 1979 and ending with the remastered CD version, be­cause this is a clear case of «longer» not being «better»: all you get is a never-ending repetitive loop of na-na-na's at the end, instead of the fabulous fade-out coda of the original — fabulous, because it featured a set of Clem Burke's most inventive drumrolls in history, as if the man wanted to show us that it was, after all, possible to be an expressive, musically-talkative drummer within a disco setting. That bit is just not there in the longer version, which is a travesty. At least they do not use the bubbly keyboards to hide the guitar riff, which is in itself a masterful blend of funk and pop — and, again, a perfect match for Debbie's vocals in terms of atmosphere: cynical disillusionment at its most light-hearted and «superficially superficial» (but really quite deep).

These mega-monster pop hits tend to swallow up the rest of the record, which is almost a shame, but that's the way life goes — only gradually you come to realize that ʽPretty Babyʼ and ʽSunday Girlʼ may be a little lighter and wussier in style, but are really just as strong melodically as every­thing else; that ʽFade Away And Radiateʼ, with its slow tempo, psychedelic keyboards, enigmatic drum beat, acid guitar solos, and somnambulic vocals, is not the «black sheep», but rather the «white swan» of this record, a moody masterpiece that is every bit the worthy successor to ʽCautious Lipʼ; that the Buddy Holly cover injects young punk venom into the old, somewhat limp rockabilly vein; and that, ultimately, at the very end Debbie gets so sick and tired of all her male counterparts that the only natural conclusion for the album is to tell them all ʽJust Go Awayʼ — when you come to think of it, a hilariously antithetical conclusion to ʽHanging On The Tele­phoneʼ. You mean to say, all that effort wasn't really worth it? I'm speechless...

Comparatively, I cannot say that Parallel Lines is more «consistent» than the other Blondie albums — the one thing that it is, it is more consistently aggressive. Louder, prouder, more force­ful than the rest, with a small bunch of particularly flashy, irresistible highlights, a special chap­ter in Blondie history, but not necessarily «that one Blondie album you have to get if you only get one», because, well, just don't be stupid and get all of them. Major thumbs up, of course, and a major turning point, but Blondie existed before it and would go on to exist after it.

Blondie: Plastic Letters

BLONDIE: PLASTIC LETTERS (1977)

1) Fan Mail; 2) Denis; 3) Bermuda Triangle Blues (Flight 45); 4) Youth Nabbed As Sniper; 5) Contact In Red Square; 6) (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear; 7) I'm On E; 8) I Didn't Have The Nerve To Say No; 9) Love At The Pier; 10) No Imagination; 11) Kidnapper; 12) Detroit 442; 13) Cautious Lip; 14*) Once I Had A Love; 15*) Scenery; 16*) Poets Problem; 17*) Detroit 442 (live).

Sometimes identified as a «transitional» album, wedged in between the sheer shockin' novelty of the self-titled debut and the stunning pop gloss of Parallel Lines, Blondie's sophomore effort tends to be a little overlooked these days, although back in 1977, it was a much bigger commer­cial success than Blondie, and landed the band their first big chart hit all over Europe. Ironically, that big hit was fairly atypical of the album — ʽDenisʼ was the band's cover of Randy & The Rain­bows' ʽDeniseʼ, a 1963 pop song with elements of doo-wop and Buddy Holly: Blondie more or less drop the whole doo-wop aspect and enforce the Buddy Holly aspect by freely quoting from ʽPeggy Sueʼ where the original had no such thing. The song's popularity, so it seems, was more of an American Graffitti-type of event, except it happened to be more popular in Europe than in Blondie's native US of A — go figure.

Anyway, even tossing ʽDenisʼ aside, had we wanted to, we could build up a very strong case for Plastic Letters as the «definitive» Blondie album, or maybe even the «best» one where these notions are correlated. Here they are still essentially a raw, untamed, unspoiled semi-underground outfit, hanging around NYC's «advanced» musical establishments, but showing an ever-increa­sing level of diversity and wildness of imagination. Arguably, some of the songs aren't quite as catchy as the ones on Blondie, but this is well compensated for by the band coming up with all sorts of «stories» and «situations» — lyrical and atmospheric subjects include mysteries, sus­pense, spy tales, catastrophes, femme fatales, and, of course, lots of character assassinations. At the same time they also stretch out and expand their musical boundaries: due largely to Jim Destri's complex keyboard palette, Plastic Letters, one way or another, covers the whole history of pop music from the late Fifties up to modern times. Doo-wop, rockabilly, Motown, and Mer­seybeat are here in symbiosis with modernistic punk, electronica, and even a bit of the «progres­sive» genre, and it all feels natural, because one thing that ties it all together is fun.

Well, that and Debbie Harry's hormonal activities, I guess — which take up a significant chunk of the album, ʽFan Mailʼ, ʽ(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dearʼ and ʽI Didn't Have The Nerve To Say Noʼ being the ultimate highlights. ʽPresenceʼ is the best realized of the three, and all the more fun when you understand that what they really do here is take that classic Byrds sound and turn it on its head, shedding the solemnity and stately beauty of Roger McGuinn's company and replacing it with sexy playfulness. Then again, I guess Debbie Harry could sing ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ and make it sound exactly the same way — this is simply in their inborn nature, they can't help being playful. Even when the love thing goes drastically bad, they still deliver the news swiftly and merrily (ʽLove At The Pierʼ, not the catchiest song on the album, but who else but Blondie would finish the song with lines like "Now I go to beaches with my girlfriend / No more love splinters in my rear end"?).

But the Byrds are far from the only musical reference / influence on the album. ʽBermuda Triangle Bluesʼ, in contrast, takes it slow and careful, with a delicate, yet stern-and-solemn guitar weave pattern that might recall stuff in the «epic folk» vein, anything from Neil Young to Van Morrison. It feels unfinished — cutting out just as Destri really begins picking up the heat on that organ and you start thinking that maybe Chris Stein will want to join him in a furious jam or something, just to illustrate the atmospheric pressure over the Bermuda Triangle — yet I would say that a certain portion of the charm of Plastic Letters is that so many things on here sound unfinished: «we saw, we conquered, we moved on without completing». The incipient spy epic ʽContact In Red Squareʼ, for instance — had that song been conceived by such experimental jokers as 10cc (and it could), they would have turned it into a six- or seven-minute mini-opera; for Blondie, two minutes of that experiment (which, if you listen close enough, includes some elements of Russian folk dance muzak for comfort) is firmly enough.

As consistent as the album already is, it actually seems to be getting stronger and stronger as it moves towards its conclusion. The last three songs, in particular, sound nothing like each other, but I don't even know which of the three I like the better — ʽKidnapperʼ, with its «Debbie-as-Elvis» bit, references to Norman Bates and Ray Milland, blues-rock harmonica, and garage guitar solo; ʽDetroit 442ʼ, the heaviest song in the band's catalog (imagine what a ʽLet There Be Rockʼ-era AC/DC song would sound like with one of the Young brothers switching to piano instead of guitar!); or ʽCautious Lipʼ, the album's longest, most heavily nuanced tune that I have no idea whatsoever how to categorize — is it «electronic blues»? «psychedelic swamp-rock»? what sort of mind effect are they going for, anyway? All I know is that the song wouldn't have sounded out of place on Their Satanic Majesties' Request, you know, one of those records.

All in all, Plastic Letters is that one Blondie album I can never see myself getting tired of — there is simply so much going on here, in all directions, that every time you put it on, you will discover yet another splatter of creativity on your jacket. Smart, hip, playful, diverse, stimulating, not particularly profound, perhaps, but never as dumb as an unexperienced novice's first listen to ʽDenisʼ could make the band seem for a moment, either. Like all great artists growing up on «pop trash», Blondie could take that slice of culture and viciously send it up for all of its clichés, while at the same time declaring undying love for it — as expressed in the energy, inventiveness, and wild combinatorics of the music. Their pop hooks would only become genuine weapons of mass destruction with the next two albums, but they'd never again make a record as, well, witty as Plastic Letters, and for this it deserves a thumbs up rating every bit as enthusiastic.