Blondie

****

With eight albums under their belt, and a string of top ten hits spanning more than twenty years, it’s hard to know what Blondie were hoping to achieve with this album. Whatever it was, though, they’ve achieved it. Frantic synthy opener ‘D-Day’ is perfect in its nostalgia, brashly setting out the score; their lead singer may be 65, but Blondie have not changed a bit.

Panic Of Girls had the potential to be a disaster, and had the album gone in a drastically new direction it most definitely would have been, however from start to finish Blondie remain as energetic, as bold and as colourful as ever. Instead of developing their sound, Panic Of Girls serves as a nod to past, a summation of the last 40 years in one 42 minute serving.

The album is abound with ‘The Tide Is High’-esque reggae influenced songs – ‘The End The End’ and ‘Girlie Girlie’ are brilliantly laid-back and mellow. The highlights of the album however are most definitely the fast-paced new-wave tracks that go heavier on the synth. ‘Mother and What I Heard’ are both fantastic tracks, very reminiscent of 1999 hit ‘Maria’. Admittedly it is a little surreal listening to Debbie Harry singing her heart out about problems you’d hope not to be experiencing at her age (‘You told me you were done with her/And I believed every word’, ‘Crying all night/My tears are oceans’), however it is so easy to believe that this album has come straight from 1978 that this does not pose much of a problem.

One of the most impressive things about Panic Of Girls is that the band still have new material to produce after all this time, and while they could be criticised for playing it safe, their winning formula doesn’t seem to have stopped working yet.