Published on Mar 8, 2006
Riding high from the success of the trashy disco
classic “Heart Of Glass,” and its album Parallel Lines on
both sides of the Atlantic, Blondie turned in their fourth album
that followed the same exact blueprint as their last three.
Eat To The Beat is nearly a clone of its
predecessor, with the same amount of songs, the same average song
length and the same sort of feel that pervaded the last album — a
unique New Wave/bubblegum pop hybrid that foreshadowed a lot of 80s
pop music. To their credit, Blondie never sounded like anyone else,
but they often sounded like themselves, with only basic variations
in the sound.
Fortunately, a few flourishes here and there keep the
record from being Parallel Lines 2. Deborah Harry
multi-tracks her voice and puts plenty of echo on “Dreaming,” which
sounds like it could have come right out of Phil Spector’s 1965
girl-group phase — it was deservedly a hit, and Harry knows
exactly how to sing a pop song. She falters slightly on “The
Hardest Part,” which tries for a David Bowie-circa-Lodger
beat but doesn’t have the lyrics to back up the authority of Clem
Burke’s drums (which carry “Dreaming” as much as Harry does.)
One wouldn’t expect music this frothy and
pop-oriented to have lyrics, and Harry doesn’t disappoint. The
platinum blonde writes stuff that occasionally boggles the mind,
but her voice sounds so natural with the music that it’s forgivable
(kind of like Jon Anderson and Yes). This is noticeable on “Union
City Blue,” the best marriage of doo-wop and new wave on the record
— while it musically succeeds, Harry sings words like “Arrive,
climb up four flights / To the orange side / Rearrange my mind.” If
you say so.
The band is at its best on the quicker songs, like
the grrl-power punk of “Accidents Never Happen” (Harry was more
punk than they gave her credit for) and “Slow Motion.” They falter
on “Shayla” and “Sound-a-Sleep,” neither of which retain any
emotion — and, on that note, what the hell is “Victor?” Harry
screams over top of a fuzzed-out guitar while the background
singers moan occasionally. By no means is it a good song, but it’s
so curiously different that it warrants a listen (but no more than
one).
But just when the album seems to be destined for
mediocrity, along comes “Atomic,” far and away the band’s best song
and the one they deserve to be remembered for. The band sets the
mood with a simple four-note riff and an excellent bass riff, while
Harry wails at the top of her vocal range something about beautiful
hair (in fact, the pre-chorus bit about “your hair is beautiful”
made the song work, according to the band’s liner notes in the
Platinum Blonde collection). After the first verse, the band
breaks into an instrumental piece — at one point, everything drops
out but the drums and bass — and then goes into the verse and
coda, with Harry repeating “Oh oh, atomic” over a crescendo of pop
music madness.
Eat To The Beat turned out to be the last good
record from the band, although they stuck it out for a couple more.
One can start to hear the signs of fraying here, as if the band
realized they were running out of ideas, but there is enough to
make this work, and like most Blondie works it has held up better
than it should have. And, it gets a higher grade just for having
“Atomic.”