Blondie
The Curse of Blondie
Sanctuary
In the band’s late-’70s heyday, the chart-topping success of Blondie was the first major musical triumph of something we take for granted in today’s culture: the semi-Warholian notion of taking iconic mass-market forms; rewrapping them in ribbons of irony (or outright sarcasm); and presto: instant decadence, cultural fluff transformed into serious art-stuff representative of the imminent decline of Western civilization. That Blondie turned out to be as commercially potent as the girl groups and other totems of ’60s pop culture the band was ironically quoting was the most subversive aspect of all, the icing on the cake.
However, it’s nearly impossible to keep one’s finger on the pulse of both Manhattan’s downtown cognoscenti and Midwestern teenage girls — to be a “great pop group” and a great pop group simultaneously — for any extended length of time. It takes a kind of perfect-storm convergence of instinct, talent, timing and the seemingly boundless chutzpah of youth. Blondie managed to get away with it for as long as it did because its members had all these qualities in abundance — and, yes, because the band was selling records like hot cakes at the time — but also because there was a genuine humanity underlying the songs and the sound of the records. The cool veneer of arty distance Blondie imposed was never so great that it couldn’t be easily traversed by anyone with two ears and a beating heart. When they finally lost their balance, with 1982’s “The Hunter,” and fell apart amid the usual swirl of drugs, egos and acrimony, it wasn’t so much tragic as inevitable.
Blondie’s comeback album, 1999’s “No Exit,” had a certain tossed-off charm, as if the reunion had been sparked by the band members’ nostalgia for the musical camaraderie of their formative CBGB years rather than by any explicit dreams of recapturing past commercial glory. But “No Exit” spawned a worldwide smash hit (the lovely, soaring “Maria”) and a series of extremely successful tours. So now, after five years of tinkering, we have the follow-up, and the no-pressure solidarity that made “No Exit” such a pleasant surprise has yielded to less spontaneous motives.
Certainly on the first few spins, “The Curse of Blondie” sounds off-puttingly synthetic and overly fussed-with, like a giant metal butterfly flapping its wings in your living room. Nothing well enough on this CD has been left alone, no breathing space left unadorned. Everywhere you turn is another layer of overly treated electric guitars or keyboards, ’80s-style sequenced synthesizer burbles, artificial drums and percussion, and bizarre vocal treatments. It’s all well-crafted, and there is good to be found in many of the songs themselves, but it is largely buried under the clatter.
Members of Blondie talk about how much they learned from Mike Chapman, the meticulous and cynical producer with whom they made their most successful albums. As mercenary and demanding as Mr. Chapman was, though, he was all about finding the clearest, most direct paths when it came to bringing out the best in the pop songs. Think, for example, of how simply and powerfully “Dreaming” announces the take-no-prisoners, pop-hook aesthetic of “Eat to the Beat.”
In contrast, “Curse” opens with two chilly stabs at contemporary R&B styles, the pro-Jersey rap “Shakedown” and the Donna Summer-ish “Good Boys,” the album’s first single. Things start to open up a bit on “Undone” and “Golden Rod,” a pair of convincing rockers, with singer Deborah Harry finally finding the nearly psychotic vocal overdrive that provided such startling counterpoint to her characteristic reserve back in the day.
Other highlights include “Rules For Living,” which marries heartfelt, almost epic lyrics to a lush and lilting melody; “Hello Joe,” a sad and delicate love letter to fallen comrade Joey Ramone (who died of lymphoma in 2001); and “Diamond Bridge,” a surreal evocation of desire that expertly employs musical dynamics to genuinely dramatic effect.
Along the way are an Okinawan folk song, “Magic,” reworked with lyrical assistance from the writer Romy Ashby; a little swinging free jazz, “Desire Brings Me Back,” composed by the saxophonist Gretchen Langheld; and the bittersweet (and irony-free) ballad “Songs of Love (For Richard)” (also by Miss Langheld), which closes the album — and suggests what Julie London might have been up to were she alive and recording today.
To be sure, “The Curse of Blondie” is a technically accomplished and varied album that grows on you with repeated listenings, and it may well find itself a place at the top of the charts. Yet it betrays every ounce of effort that went into its construction. You can’t help but long for the time when Blondie records didn’t require repeated listenings to lodge inside your head — when their appeal simply bowled you over.
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