Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

Consumer Guide:
  User's Guide
  Grades 1990-
  Grades 1969-89
  And It Don't Stop
Books:
  Book Reports
  Is It Still Good to Ya?
  Going Into the City
  Consumer Guide: 90s
  Grown Up All Wrong
  Consumer Guide: 80s
  Consumer Guide: 70s
  Any Old Way You Choose It
  Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
Xgau Sez
Writings:
  And It Don't Stop
  CG Columns
  Rock&Roll& [new]
  Rock&Roll& [old]
  Music Essays
  Music Reviews
  Book Reviews
  NAJP Blog
  Playboy
  Blender
  Rolling Stone
  Billboard
  Video Reviews
  Pazz & Jop
  Recyclables
  Newsprint
  Lists
  Miscellany
Bibliography
NPR
Web Site:
  Home
  Site Map
  Contact
  What's New?
    RSS
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
Twitter:
****1/2

BLONDIE
Parallel Lines (Deluxe Collector's Edition)
Capitol/EMI

On their third album, dapper New Yorkers launched the first of four No. 1 singles

Parallel Lines was a perfect album in 1978 and hasn't gained a pound since--every song memorable, distinct, well-shaped and over before you get antsy. Never again did singer Deborah Harry, mastermind Chris Stein and their able four-man cohort nail the band's signature paradoxes with such unfailing flair: lowbrow class, tender sarcasm, pop rock. Some tracks stand out from the perfect pack even so--the exquisitely Brooklynese "Hanging on the Telephone," the dreamily unpinnable "Sunday Girl," the mock-noir, girl-hunts-boy "One Way or Another." And don't ignore this version's four uncluttered pre-MTV performance videos, which make the most of Harry's scrumptious mouth. It's docked half a star, however, for withholding a genuinely momentous remix: the "Heart of Glass" 12-inch, whose two extra disco-slanted minutes finally turned Blondie into a hit act in their native land.

Blender, Sept. 2008