3: Ghosts of Download - Blondie

GHOSTS OF DOWNLOAD

BASIC INFORMATION

Artist: Blondie

Release date: May 12, 2014 (finally!)

Genre: Dance-pop, dance-rock and electropop with lots of Latin-pop

Featured artists: Systema Solar, Miss Guy, Beth Ditto, Los Rakas, Keilah Baez, Keisha Williams, Felicia Dennis

Producers: Jeff Saltzman, Chris Stein, Hector Fonseca, Matt Katz-Bohen

Singles: ‘A Rose By Any Name’, ‘Sugar On the Side’, ‘I Want To Drag You Around’

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The title is an attention-grabbing albeit slightly clunky one, suggesting a whole realm of electronic-y music, true to the composition of the record. It’s certainly a better title than the clunky but clever “Blondie 4(0) Ever”, which has been applied to the double album. The cover, as with the band’s previous release Panic of Girls, is a marvellously impressive one – a skeletal Debbie Harry in a disco full of viruses and electronic signals. Or whatever you want to interpret it as. JH Williams III’s art is amazing, and that and the title could be enough to make this album attractive to the general public.

TRACK-BY-TRACK

Sugar On the Side (ft. Systema Solar): Wow. This is how you open an album. With a fantastically-produced and fantastically-written song. This corrects a major problem with Panic of Girls by including a great rap in Spanish, but not letting the Spanish completely take over the song. With breathtaking vocals from everyone involved and a great danceable tune, this is the one of the best starts to a Blondie album ever. 10/10.

Rave (ft. Miss Guy): A highly-catchy rock tune. Fans have raised complaints about drag queen Miss Guy’s vocals drowning out Debbie Harry’s, and while he isn’t too prominent, why’s he here at all? In addition to this, the live version of this song is a full-on rock song, while the studio track is realised with techno effects and programmed parts. Those are just small criticisms about a highly catchy song with great music and lyrics. 8/10.

 

A Rose By Any Name (ft. Beth Ditto): A natural choice for the first single, by this track it’s obvious that Blondie really are back with a bang. “A Rose By Any Name” is an incredibly catchy and easily danceable song. Both Beth Ditto and Debbie Harry, who trade vocals, are vocally on-point, and the production is right up to date. A highlight of Blondie’s entire career. 10/10.

Winter: The album’s pace slows a little, but the quality remains at an all-time high, in the fourth track on the album. The sheer force of the opening, slithering keyboard motif is great, and the song is sultry yet danceable, with sly and clever lyrics. Debbie Harry gets a chance to shine on a near-enough-flawless track. 9/10.

I Want To Drag You Around: A mellow track, this seems like an odd choice for the album’s first worldwide single. It’s more like a filler track on an album, extremely lovely in what it does, but rather light on substance. Still, Debbie Harry’s vocals are electrifying as ever, and this is a nice gentle song to balance out the brilliant chaos surrounding it. Kudos to backing vocalist Natalie Hawkins. 7/10.

I Screwed Up (ft. Los Rakas): As with “Sugar On the Side”, the formula has now been perfected. Blondie deliver a catchy track with ever-so-slightly daring lyrics (Johnny Depp in drag, indeed!) and a clear Latino beat going on underneath it all. The rap sections, from Oakland-based Los Rakas, compliment the feel of the track well. While not up to par with the opening crash-bang-whallop of the album, this is still an impressive song. 7/10.

Relax: Wow. I was expecting something truly awful from this track, but, boy, was I wrong! The opening three minutes of this Frankie Goes to Hollywood cover are in the form of the most beautiful acoustic piano ballad I’ve ever heard. And then… the whole Blondie madness explodes with a stadium-like display of synthesizers, beats, and… wow. This defies all expectations in a delightful cover. 8/10.

Take Me In the Night: This is catchy as hell, a wonderfully modern Blondie track which gives everyone a chance to shine. The lyrics are without a doubt some of Blondie’s best ever, and the production shines, beginning simply and crescendoing in the chorus, with every note a success. One of the real standouts of the album; lesser artists would sell their parents for a song like this. 10/10.

Make A Way: Street light shining through the window, you’re playing Nintendo… the first song premiered from the album, “Make A Way” rides on a Turkish groove and gives it the “Ghosts of Download” treatment, producing a fabulous, fabulous song. It’s been said about almost every song on the album, but Debbie Harry’s lyrics are perfect here, and between them Chris Stein, Natalie Hawkins and Jeff Saltzman have written perfect music. Definitely one of the album’s major hits. 9/10.

Mile High: Live, this song was a rocker. In the studio, it’s an EDM song. That’s quite a big jump, but one the song has made well. This song sounds thoroughly modern, and I love the ending, where all the different parts of the song come together and overlap. While the song never really reaches its full EDM potential and is a little formulaic, it is nonetheless one of the album’s standout tracks. 9/10.

Euphoria: The only track on the album that doesn’t really work. It’s got all the right elements, just maybe not in the right order? Or something. It seems hard to categorise this song, or work out where its faults lie. By itself, this song is an interesting example of what Blondie are doing now. But surrounded by fifteen other brilliant tracks, this one seems a bit like the ugly duckling. 5/10.

Take It Back: Chris Stein has commented this is an album track rather than a single. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t rock. This is a return to form after “Euphoria”, a nice mix of the more modern, more programmed Blondie and the old-school New Wave of the band’s heyday, with nice lyrics and a glorious “na na na” section. 8/10.

Backroom: Flippin’ hell! When the album was streamed a week before its release, this, ‘Relax’ and ‘Euphoria’ were the songs I purposefully missed out on listening to so I could have some surprises when I listened to the album. And this was the biggest surprise of all… Blondie does reggae… and it goes great! The lyrics are fabulously vampiric, weird and wonderful, and the flawless production compliments Debbie’s sublime vocals. The perfect album closer. 10/10.

BONUS TRACKS

 

Put Some Color On You: Well this was a surprise. The most modern track on the album, why this is only a bonus track is possibly the most important question in the entire history of the universe. With its disco-tinged pop, this is a marvellous example of Blondie being modern but still Blondie. Its repeating “oooh” melody is fantastic, as its sublime lyrics. This is, in one word, mind-blowing. 10/10.

Can’t Stop Wanting: Oh, this song sounds dated, and gloriously cheesy. But maybe that’s the point…? The lyrics on this, however, are completely awesome, some of the best on the album. ‘Silicone kisses, are they real enough for you?’ And most importantly of all, this bubblegum-y electropop song makes you want to dance until the sun comes back up. 8/10.

Prism: Haunting. Melancholy. Sadness. Farewell. These words all seem appropriate to describe the final track on the album, with its slowly-building subtle electronic melodies, its ghostly backing vocals, its perfect production, its sorrowful singing, its sparse but effective lyrics. While Chris Stein has already said he’s working on ideas for the band’s next studio album, this song does feel like a farewell, and says goodbye perfectly. 9/10.

IF I COULD ONLY HAVE THREE SONGS: “Sugar On the Side”, “Backroom”, “Take Me In the Night”

IF I COULD CHOOSE THE SINGLES: “A Rose By Any Name”, “Sugar On the Side”, “Rave”, “Mile High”, “Take Me In the Night”, “Put Some Color On You”

SURPRISE SUCCESS: “Relax”

THE DUFF NOTE: “Euphoria”

OVERVIEW

Blondie’s tenth studio album sees them trying to move forward, with an unimaginably impressive selection of thoroughly modern-sounding tracks created largely electronically and taking inspiration from a wide variety of music. While it might not be everybody’s cup of tea <cough>MOJOMAGAZINE<cough> this is my kind of music, and as long as Blondie continue to make this kind of music, I’ll be happy for eternity. Jeff Saltzman shows what he can really do, and the fact Chris Stein is producer on this album alongside Saltzman makes my heart sing. And whilst I know “Parallel Lines” is heralded as Blondie’s finest album, I truly and honestly believe that this album has snatched its crown. 9.5/10.

IMPROVEMENT STATION

The only improvement I can think of for this unbelievable album is to swap “Euphoria” with “Put Some Color On You”, rendering “Euphoria” a bonus track only. And also to add “Prism” to the main album. That’s all I can think of.

2: Panic of Girls - Blondie

PANIC OF GIRLS

BASIC INFORMATION

Artist: Blondie

Release date: May 30, 2011

Genre: As with Blondie, everything. New Wave, rock, pop, dance-rock, reggae

Producers: Jeff Saltzman, Kato Khandwala

Singles: ‘Mother’, ‘What I Heard’

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The title is certainly an attention-grabbing and impressive one, suggesting a sense of mania that the album never quite manages to reach. The cover, by Dutch artist Chris Berens, is a thing of beauty: fantastically weird and mismatched, it kinds of fits with the album, presenting distorted whirlwind-y figures of the band, maybe to reflect the distorted, all-over-the-place nature of the material. The title and the cover are definitely good for getting people to pick up the album.

TRACK-BY-TRACK

D-Day: A very strong start to the album with a fast-paced rock track. Debbie Harry’s vocals are cybernetic and futuristic in places. The lyrics are strong and the song doesn’t overstay its welcome, remaining punchy, thoroughly modern, and engaging. 10/10.

What I Heard: Continuing the opening shock of Panic of Girls, the album’s second single is more radio-friendly and more pop than ‘D-Day’, boasting a fizzing rock-tinged pop instrumental, good lyrics and good singing. Nothing is truly better than ‘average’ here, although new bandmember Matt Katz-Bohen is to be commended for bottling the Blondie sound. 7/10.

Mother: Similar-sounding in production to ‘What I Heard’ and ‘Love Doesn’t Frighten Me’, this is probably the most radio-friendly track on the album, continuing the opening pop-rock punch of the album. The lyrics are good, the production average and the singing enthusiastic in a track worthy of being the lead single to the album. 8/10.

The End the End: The cyber-punk punch of the beginning of the album now ends as the record slides into reggae. This is a pleasant foray into reggae, and while it’s a little light of substance, it’s a harmless little album track, so you can’t be too mean to it. Debbie Harry’s vocals are perfect. 8/10.

Girlie Girlie: Blondie do covers so perfectly. Think Hanging on the Telephone or Denis. And Debbie Harry’s uber-confident rendition of this Sophia George cover made me believe upon first listen that she had written it. It’s so Blondie and so brilliant for that reason. You can tell Debbie and the whole band are having a ball here. 9/10.

Love Doesn’t Frighten Me: Recalling ‘Mother’ and ‘What I Heard’, this song has a nice opening riff, lyrics which aren’t just up to par, singing which is a little too uniform and regulated, but impressive performances from the whole band. This just sounds a little too neat, but all in all is still impressive. 8/10.

Words in My Mouth: The album drops again after the blast of fresh air that was “Love Doesn’t Frighten Me”. A pleasant enough song, and a nice calming-down point for the album. Written by the geniuses behind ‘D-Day’ and ‘Horizontal Twist’, there’s nothing wrong with this, to be honest. But surrounded by “Wipe Off My Sweat”, “Girlie Girlie” and “Love Doesn’t Frighten Me”, it looks a little bit like the Ugly Duckling of the middle of Panic. 7/10.

Sunday Smile: The third of this album’s customary “Tide is High” pastiches, this cover has no real place on the album. Its alleged reggae-calypso charms fall flat on their face, as Debbie Harry doesn’t sing with conviction, the band doesn’t play with conviction, and the song drags on for what seems like hours longer than anybody wants. This is the point where the album, which has been flying reasonably high in the sky until now, suddenly malfunctions and starts to crash into the ocean. 2/10.

Wipe Off My Sweat: The production on this song is so bad I could cry. It sounds like one of those terrible remixes of ‘Atomic’ that was on that compilation from 1998. Nevertheless, the song comes from three of the band’s songwriting masterminds, and although there is unnecessary Spanish lyricism, the song is fast-paced and doesn’t sink too far down into the water. 6/10.

Le Bleu: Four and a half minutes of totally unnecessary pseudo-French accordion-y music-hall tat that has no place even on a traditionally experimental Blondie album, to be brutally honest. There are few nice moments in what is an unnecessarily lengthy and dull song. This, along with ‘Sunday Smile’ and ‘Mirame’, is what’s really, really letting the album down. 1/10.

China Shoes: This is so lovely it made Lady Gaga cry. Haunting and melancholic, this is a quiet standout of the album; certainly the best ballad-y slow track on the album, it’s likely to get neglected because of its slow tempo. The lyrics are some of the best ever by Blondie, and the music beautiful, proving there’s nothing wrong with a bit of Harry and Stein, and ending the album in the same fantastically good manner as it began. 10/10.

BONUS TRACKS

Horizontal Twist: This is the most fun track on the album, and entirely deserving of being featured on the album. It’s SO FUN! Debbie gives her best vocals on the album, sounding so effortlessly cool, and the lyrics are weird and fun and rhyme-y and fantastic. The music is simple but awesome, dance-able, and fun. Other artists would kill to have songs like this. 10/10.

Mirame: The third culprit of why the album is so bad, it’s understandable why this was reduced to only be a bonus track, for it is awful. Blondie has always been, no matter how experimental in their albums, a New Wave, pop-rock, punk-y band. Why all the unnecessary excursions into reggae and world-music? The opening riff is lovely, and it repeats through the song, but from the first word of Spanish it’s clear this is a miss rather than a hit. 1/10.

End of the World: This is six minutes long. Six minutes long. SIX F***ING MINUTES LONG! And worse still, it’s not even a good song. It’s six minutes of the sort of dreariness that makes you so desperate you will even listen to “Sunday Smile”. There’s nothing good in a forgettable six minutes of misery and sorrow. 1/10.

Sleeping Giant: Why this is merely a bonus track is a question that will never have a good enough answer. This is beautiful, and fascinating, and cyber-rock, and with the most superb lyrics ever witnessed (apart from those on ‘China Shoes’). Another perfect slice of Harry and Stein. I have the notion that back in 1979 or so, the essence of a perfect Blondie song was bottled for future use. This is one of the times when the bottle was opened. 10/10.

OVERVIEW

Given that it was eight years since the previous Blondie release, this is impressive stuff, showing that the well hasn’t run dry yet… just. The good tracks are FANTASTIC, and the bad tracks are suicide-inducingly AWFUL. There’s a clear rift. Jeff Saltzman’s production has its flaws in places, but he is a good addition to the band’s production. This album would have benefited massively from “Horizontal Twist” and “Sleeping Giant” being on it. Above all, this is a case of the band trying to please too many people at once – reggae fans, rock fans, Spanish fans, French fans – and as such the album lacks focus and alienates long-standing Blondie fans; at least this reinforces the notion that you never know what you’re getting with Blondie. Despite this, Debbie Harry’s vocals are as good as ever in the strongest release since Blondie’s comeback… until the upcoming “Ghosts of Download”, that is… 5/10 just for being so out there, and not being afraid of taking a new direction. However, a 7/10 for the Special Editions.

IMPROVEMENT STATION

The album’s main problem is its reggae and world-music tracks – there was no real reason for two of the album’s tracks (three on the Collector’s Pack edition) to be sung in different languages, just as there was no real reason for so much reggae. If the whole album continued the cyber-punk feel of tracks like “D-Day” and “Horizontal Twist”, this would surely have been a hit.

       

      I think the real way to improve this would have been just to let the band loose – Debbie Harry is a fantastic lyricist, and Matt Katz-Bohen and Chris Stein fantastic songwriters. If the album was written entirely by Harry, Katz-Bohen and Stein along with Barb Morrison and Charles Neiland (‘D Day’, ‘Words in My Mouth’, ‘Horizontal Twist’), this would have been a lot better.

     

           ‘End of the World’, ‘Sunday Smile’ and ‘Le Bleu’ overstay their welcome – surely a chorus could have been cut from these at least? (‘End of the World’ runs to almost six minutes, for example).

      

      You can never have the perfect version of Panic of Girls. This is because there were two special editions – the Deluxe Edition and the Collector’s Pack (which includes badges, the album, a magazine, photos, postcards and a poster). Each of the special editions included two bonus tracks. Unfortunately, the Deluxe Edition has “Sleeping Giant”, which is great, but it has “End of the World” too. Likewise, the Collector’s Pack has “Horizontal Twist”, which is fabulous, but “Mirame” too. An improvement would be if “Sleeping Giant” and “Horizontal Twist” were on the same Deluxe Edition of the album. 

  

      The tracklist is sloppy and messy. It begins well but there is far too much reggae, with the hits distributed far and few between. In addition to this, some of the best tracks are reserved for the Special Editions. IMO an improved tracklist would be:

1)      D- Day

2)      What I Heard

3)      Bride of Infinity [an outtake from the recording sessions]

4)      Girlie Girlie

5)      The End the End

6)      Mother

7)      Love Doesn’t Frighten Me

8)      Horizontal Twist

9)      Sleeping Giant

10)  China Shoes

DELUXE EDITION

11)  Words in My Mouth

12)  Practice Makes Perfect [another outtake]

SOUTH AMERICA / SPAIN ONLY

                  11)  Wipe Off My Sweat

 COMING SOON: Hopefully, some Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga reviews will be coming soon, all leading up to a review of Blondie's brand-new album "Ghosts of Download" around May 16, and a review of its accompanying album "Deluxe Redux" a day or two later.