Blondie - Plastic Letters

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Free Music Notes for Plastic Letters

Free Music Review: You didn't know this was important to you!
Hit: 5 Stars

Every single track - even the bonus tracks on this rerelease - is worth listening to, and every one is great.

And yet it's vastly underrated - a lot of reviews I've read (not all here, though) say that this is a pale imitation of BLONDIE. How?!?!? The production is sharper, the songs have more depth, and are just brilliant in general - but they still have a great punk edge to them, an edge lost with PARALLEL LINES. (Well, it was!)

We have two marveloussly catchy somgs to begin with - "Fan Mail" (sets the trend of stellar keyboard-playing from Jimmy Destri through this album), and of course "Denis" (love that dodgy French!), before moving onto the eerie, haunting "Bermuda Triangle Blues," the incredibly menacing "Youth Nabbed as Sniper" (bravura drumming here from Clem Burke - same goes for the rest of the album), the near power-pop burst of "Contact in Red Square" (less than 2 minutes long!), "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear" - well, I don't think I need to add more; the giddily fun "I'm on E" (it's not what you think), the wonderfully pouty "I Didn't Have the Nerve to say No," "Love at the Pier" - the hands down best (not to mention funniest) song Debbie ever wrote, the moodier "No Imagination," the warped rockabilly (I think) of "Kidnapper," the pounding "Detroit 442," and the trippy (you could say bad-trippy), jarring (mainly when Debbie suddenly screams) semi-blues of "Cautious Lip."

Well, that's the album itself - as for the bonuses: we get the "Heart of Glass" precursor "Once I Had a Love" in its 1975 demo-tape version, which happily lacks the sonic distortion the demos on BLONDIE displayed - don't quite know why it's here, though (as opposed to being on BLONDIE); "Scenery," another great Gary Valentine song, and an outtake from BLONDIE - it's not hard to see why, since it sounds completely different from all the other songs on that album; "Poets Problem," the B-side of "Presence, Dear" - it fits right in with the album itself; and a live version of "Detroit 442," which is worthwhile for a different take on things. (It was recorded at the same Philadelphia show as featured in "Picture This Live" - how much else of that show was recorded?)

Also, the booklet is very good - the liner notes by Richard Gottehrer are shorter, just one page, but there's more photos. And the sound quality is great - the songs on THE PLATINUM COLLECTION sound markedly lo-fi in comparison.

OK, now that you've read this, buy the album! You'll be amazed at what you've missed!!

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