Autoamerican

• Eat To The Beat
• Plastic Letters
• Parallel Lines
• Blondie

On "Autoamerican" Blondie, in spirit at least, step outside New York and breathe in the vast scope and beauty of America. The record's opening sequence Europa, a somewhat intellectual concept of the automobile voiced robotically by Harry, is the statement of intent, giving way to the perfect disco bass of Live it Up, containing one of Blondie's great lines: "you know its so passé/to sleep without you every day". Go Through It cruises along an open highway with tender love and gutsy charm. Do the Dark, tinged with North African allusion, is a shadowy and mysterious invitation to "do the Sidewalk Hustle/do the Invisible Dance" and is one of Blondie's most intoxicating songs.

Admittedly The Tide is High becomes increasingly easy to skip over as the album's finest moments become even more alluring; The old time dance-hall number Here's Looking at You - lazy, smoky and poignant, voiced through a glass of bourbon while pining for Monroe. The immortal Rapture, cooler now than it ever was, and a significant piece of pop culture in itself, pin-pointing the exact moment when the New York elite chose hip-hop over power pop. Evoking Basquait and Warhol as effortlessly as it does huge yellow taxi cabs and brownstone buildings; space mutants and b-movies; Coca Cola and Studio 54.

In fact there is not a song on Autoamerican that does not shimmer in the searing heat of a Manhattan summer, not least Jimmy Destri's sublime Angels on the Balcony. Lucid, warm and effervescent, it is imbued with magic and a bittersweet nostalgia and is perhaps the most beautiful song Blondie ever recorded, where Harry's touching vocal is both as cool and as sweet as vanilla ice-cream.

Walk Like Me is Destri's call to arms, invoking the individual in a grid locked, press frenzied America where everyone's merely a number - "change the way you comb your hair and watch what you walk under" states Harry over Clem Burke's stabbing drum punches, before straining angrily "why don't you walk like me?". The record closes with Harry's lovely rendition of the Lerner & Lowe classic Follow Me, as if one needs proof that Blondie, despite their modern sensibility, belong in all times, any time. Genius.

But C'MON! "Here's Looking At You" and "Follow Me" are gay cabaret at its worst, and "Europa" is perhaps the most overproduced piece of junk the band ever recorded. Please tell me what the functional difference between "Live It Up" and "Do The Dark" is, cuz I don't see it.

Now, I do give kudos to Blondie for the enormous hits they scored with "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture." But I change the station when I hear those danged things start today. PLAYED OUT. Great in their time, but I just can't take them any more.

This album just tries way too hard to be all things to all people. The Blondie I know and love is Plastic Letters/Parallel Lines/Eat to the Beat and most of The Hunter. And I can't help but add in KooKoo and the freaking BRILLIANT Heart on a Wall, one of my top 10 albums of the '80s.

But sorry, Autoamerican isn't anywhere near the six listed above. This was a sorry presaging of what the decade was about to do to ballsy rock.

• Styles > Alternative Rock
• Styles > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk
• Styles > Alternative Rock > New Wave & Post-Punk
• Styles > Dance & DJ > Dance Pop
• Styles > Dance & DJ
• Styles > Pop > Dance Pop
• Styles > Pop
• Styles > Rock

• Amazon.ca : Autoamerican