Blondie: No Exit

Blondie has nothing to prove. After distinguishing itself in the embarrassingly talent-rich '70s New York scene that spawned Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, and many more, Blondie crossed over to mainstream success, helped establish that a female-fronted band could succeed on its own terms, legitimized the good side of disco, helped introduce rap and hip-hop culture to the public, and jumped genres from rock to reggae to girl-group pop with abandon, and in a way that made the group's daytripping into each seem perfectly legitimate. So why put out an album after a 17-year absence Well, for an important band with nothing to prove, why not A better question would be this: Why put out an album that sounds like an alternate version of the group's greatest hits from a universe in which Blondie wasn't particularly good The group's Jamaican influence shows up immediately on the album-opening "Screaming Skin," but to nowhere near as strong an effect as on, say, "The Tide Is High." The title track, a disastrous rap number featuring Coolio, opens with a riff from Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and goes nowhere from there. But, then, where could it go (Note to Deborah Harry: Making the world safe for rap music with "Rapture" may give you the right to carry on rapping with abandon, but it doesn't mean you should exercise that right.) A remake of the Shangri-Las' "Out In The Streets" sounds passionless in a way Blondie's past pop resurrections, whether covers or homages, never did. Aside from a decent single ("Maria") and the embarrassing (and embarrassingly titled) "Boom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Room," the rest of No Exit contents itself with mediocrity. It's as unnecessary a comeback as has ever been attempted, and it only confirms that Blondie's past glories remain cemented there, apart from these pale pretenders.