Blondie: The Hunter - 1982

 

Funny how quickly a band can fall from grace. It had been around four-five upwardly mobile years culminating in the peak period of mid-1978 to early 1980 for Blondie. 

Here, however, the monarchs of the new wave fell flat on their collective faces with this release of one of the worst things a band can record - a contract-fulfilling album. They owed Chrysalis one more effort, so they duly went through the motions and you can (sort of) tell. Much of the album is dullish funk/rock/pop to suit the trends of the time and Debbie sported "big hair" on the cover. I remember, as someone who had bought all the previous Blondie albums, totally ignoring this album's release. Listening to it again, though, it's not so bad, not at all.

Anyway, on to the music. It continues its predecessor's often experimental ambience and, just as with that album, it suffers from a disunity and lack of cohesion. Orchid Club is muffled-sounding piece of slow Blondie contemporaneously tribal funk/pop, while Island Of Lost Souls surprisingly gave us a summery, calypso-ish frothy number that has always brought to mind The Eurythmics' Right By Your Side (although the latter didn't appear until a few years later). To be fair, it is not a bad track, albeit somewhat contrived in its desire to emulate The Tide Is High. 

A lot of people slam the semi-spoken Dragonfly, but, for me, it is pretty similar to much of Blondie's late seventies/early eighties output and I actually don't mind it at all, loving its laid-back Bryan Ferry-esque syncopation. For Your Eyes Only was rejected as the theme tune for the upcoming movie - they chose Sheena Easton instead, which was a shame, because this suitably Bond-sounding song may have done really well. It is the superior song to Easton one, in my opinion. 

The Beast is delivered typically detached, monotone Harry-rap. They had done this before on Rapture, however. There is quite a bit of retreading familiar paths on here. The same can be applied to War Child, which was a single, and has definite airs of Rapture's cool vocal about it. It has a catchy, very early eighties groove to it, and it has remained unfortunately overlooked in Blondie's canon. Little Caesar features more semi-spoken vocals over a brass and white reggae backing. Danceaway is the only Jimmy Destri track on the album and is as you would expect - a fairground-ish organ-driven number. 

The ridiculously-bracketed (Can I) Find The Right Words (To Say) is Blondie by numbers with a fine guitar solo and English Boys is an underrated number with an appealing vocal. These tracks are certainly not as bad as many critics have said, it is just that they are not particularly special, as many of the band's earlier tracks were. The album ends with a nice jazzy, laid-back cover of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles' The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game. You know, I've actually quite enjoyed giving this album some proper attention after all these years.