Blondie: No Exit - 1999
This was Blondie's first album since 1982, and although it suffers from the curse of the end of the nineties-early 2000s in that the CD age had made it simply too long (nearly an hour), there is some good stuff on there.
Screaming Skin is Blondie meets two tone - it has a lively ska beat and an infectious sound straight out of 1981. It was a fine welcome back. The quality is continued on the cool, Blondie-disco sound of Forgive And Forget, with Debbie's ethereal vocal floating over the subtly insistent rhythm. Maria was the album's big hit single, providing the band with a number one, and the longest time for an artist between numbers ones (since The Tide Is High - eighteen years). It is a wonderful piece of Clem Burke-driven Blondie power pop, with the catchy sound of 1977-78 all over it. Nice one. Up there with Blondie's best songs of all time, no question.
No Exit is a fusion of classical-influenced ELP-style keyboards with rap and hip-hop, full of huge chunky beats and rap vocals from guest rappers Coolio and others that I can't remember. There is a great fuzzy guitar solo to that goes all classical at one point. Bach's Toccata And Fugue and Grieg's Hall Of The Mountain King are interpreted by keyboard and guitar. It is an innovative piece. Double Take is a sombre, synthesiser-backed love song that is once again full of atmosphere. Debbie's vocal has a sad tone to it. Candy Dulfer guests on saxophone.
Nothing Is Real But The Girl is another very typical late seventies Blondie track, it would have sounded fine on Parallel Lines or Eat To The Beat and still sounds beautifully nostalgic on here. Blondie have always liked a bit of cool, jazzy vibes and they deliver it here on the attractively quirky and oddly-titled Boom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Room.
Both Night Wind Set and, particularly, Under The Gun have more seventies Blondie echoes. I like the latter a lot. Out In The Streets is a mournful-sounding, string-backed cover of The Shangri-Las' sixties number that has a sadness to it that suits the song. Happy Dog is a nice, chuggingly riffy and humorous number about a dog's hairy butt that suffers from being near the end of the album, so I sort of tended to forget about it.
By now the album should have ended, as it would have done back in 1978. But it still goes on - The Dream's Lost On Me is country influenced while Divine has reggae tinges. This genre-hopping album ends with the experimental, psychedelic-ish Dig Up The Conjo. As I said, the album was too long but it doesn't really detract from its appeal. It was a convincing comeback, something that doesn't always happen.
