#842 Blondie - Parallel Lines

A preposterously solid album, positively shimmering with excellent songwriting, draped in swagger on swagger in the delivery. It's all the cool of new wave with half of the challenge, with songs bent into poppier, hookier forms, songs that bounce off the walls but stay in the same, starkly black-and-white-striped room. The slower, more retro-flecked songs threaten to sap the momentum, but always manage to pull out of the tailspin, making the album-length maneuver all the more impressive in retrospect. The fact that the guitar moves are inventive and deftly execute sure doesn't hurt - Hanging on the Telephone, in particular, is just an all time pop-punk masterpiece, burning off excess tempo and Pretty Girls Make Graves guitars and double backbeat debris across its entire flaming reentry 4.5/5