Panic Of Girls

This is the best Blondie album since the early '80s, with a wonderful variety of sounds and mood, and would have been a great follow-up to AutoAmerican, which, I must admit, is my favourite Blondie album.

Like the incredible Stevie Nicks, Debbie Harry's voice has achieved a wonderful honeyed huskiness with maturity, but has lost none of its power, and it is her creative stamp which is most strongly felt on the 11 tracks here. The playful lyrics and performances run the gamut from torch song cadences to strong emotional rock hooks, and there are reminders of almost every musical direction Harry has ever taken in both her solo work and with the full band. For example, the opener 'D-Day' could have been on Koo-Koo, 'Mother' could have been lifted from 'The Hunter', 'Love Doesn't Frighten Me' could have been on 'Eat to the Beat'.....

The BBC review that is quoted on this page finds this range of approaches to be the album's weakness - I would say it is the TOTAL opposite - this is the album's supreme strength, and that reviewer is obviously out of touch with the very quality that Blondie fans hold dear about each album's cornucopia of surprises.

This is definitely a much better and more enjoyable collection than 'The Curse of...' or 'No Exit', and demonstrates that Blondie's creative prowess is nowhere near any kind of decline.

Let's hope this is not the last studio album, or that another 8 years have to pass until we get another. On this evidence, Blondie still have so much more to contribute to their musical legacy, and long may it continue.

Brilliant!

This is excellent 5 stars for inspiration alone! 65 years of age and Debbie Harry is still the best and head and shoulders over the rest! There is something so inspiring about the way she still sounds so fresh and still touring - the show in Belfast last summer was electrifying and Debbie and the band were awesome, theres still so much energy in the bands live performances too it was the best live show I've ever seen and I've been to a few including Bowie & U2! As for the new album there are so many strong songs and highlights on this record and it deserves to be huge! Am already tapping away to new classics like D-Day, What I heard, Mother, Love doesn't frighten me and The End The End. Its amazing to have so many new excellent Blondie anthems in the year 2011. Little did I know when I was an innocent little 9 yr old singing along to Heart of Glass in 1979 that the best band in the world would still be going strong and putting out excellent records over 3 decades later and long may it continue! Thanks Debbie & Blondie for the great music and the inspiration that growing older doesn't mean by any shot that its The end The end.

This album has been on my ipod for a good three weeks now and I have really been enjoying it. It includes several radio-friendly, rock-out pop songs of the type for which Blondie are famous - I recommend "Love Doesn't Frighten Me" and "What I Heard". The latin flavour of "Wipe Off My Sweat" is rather fun, whereas the final track, the mid-paced "China Shoes", is a gem of a song and very much a 'grower'. True, this album is a little eclectic, as other reviewers have said, but then that's very much a tradition with Blondie albums and I think it's a positive. "Panic Of Girls" works well as a collection of songs and it more than demonstrates that now in their fifth decade, Blondie are still turning out exciting, quality original material.