 Blondie Textbook example of an album that 70s-era critics continue to hold up as a peerless classic … what I hear is an enjoyable album with a whole lot of meandering new wave trappings. I dig Blondie, dig them mightily, but Parallel Lines is not nearly their best album … in fact, they only made a few great albums, and this is maybe the third-best. The Best of Blondie has still not been beaten as a single-disc representation of the band's greatness, and while Parallel Lines is packed with singles ("Heart of Glass," "One Way or Another," "Hanging on the Telephone," "Sunday Girl"), it's notably uneven. Some great also-ran album tracks help out ("11:59," "Fade Away and Radiate," "Picture This," "I'm Gonna Love You Too"), but the party crashes to a halt every three songs or so. My main trouble with Parallel Lines is that I appreciate it much more as a track listing than as a listening experience … for example, "11:59" is one of the best songs Blondie ever did – except for the fact that the intro and outro almost completely ruin it. I have put this song on mix tapes for people after editing the intro out and fading the outro, and they almost always say "Wow, that Blondie song is fantastic!" Then they go out and get Parallel Lines and they can't believe how bad the song seems with the intro and outro intact. This is symptomatic of having a bunch of skinny-tie guys play the music … you're always going to run into dopey tricks that they probably thought were flashy and cool, but which seem so corny and lame nowadays. I mean, no one is celebrating the Romantics, right? And without Debbie Harry, Blondie was just the Romantics. Perhaps I'm being too hard on the album, overcompensating for its oversaturated and exaggerated critical acclaim. But honestly, there's only so far you can take praise of a song like "I Know But I Don't Know" without it just being wrong. It might have sounded great at CBGBs with all your pseudo-punk friends in 1978, but listening on my work headphones while I prepare some shit-ass spreadsheet, it sounds like the filler it is. "Will Anything Happen" is more testosterone-fueled faux edginess along the same lines. No, I was right in the first place. It's an album that benefits from the singles, which are more readily accessible on The Best of Blondie. "Just Go Away" closes the album, a Debbie Harry original that also deserves some more attention. Parallel Lines really is a mixed bag. Probably the best way to appreciate it is in the form of driving music, where you're not necessarily listening too closely. That way you're not really going to be too upset by the exces of drum fills all over the frickin place and the overall shallowness of the material. Debbie's voice is fantastic as always, and where the record is strong, it's really strong, but it can't be denied that Parallel Lines has many annoying elements. Blondie was a band, yes … but that was precisely the problem.
Review by Elton Hurd |