Word: albums
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Blondie's biggest asset, though, is Harry herself. On the first album, her voice sounds like it is always just about to go flat. You'd expect to be annoyed at such amateurism; Harry turns it into a winning quality--she sounds cute...
Harry's obvious talent has carried Blondie through a musical identity crisis. The tension between the elements of '50s pop and '70s experimentalism which the group tried to fuse made its second album, Plastic Letters, an unsatisfying anomaly. Harry's too-coy but lovable cover of the oldie "Denise" just didn't sound right next to the empty, brutal "Detroit 442" or "Cautious...
...begins with his older stuff, "Ziggy Stardust" and songs from that album like "Five Years," leaving on the rock riffs and self-consciously-confused lyrics. The sound quality will strike fans of the vinyl Bowie as poor; his lushly-produced effects get stripped down to what a seven-man band can handle on stage. Bowie's vocal machinations, so clever and startling out of the studio, lose some of their sparkle when forced to follow one another in sequence. The side has a nightclub feel, like a good band at Jack's going through some of Bowie's old hits...
...second side is much more pleasing. "Station to Station" starts with a synthesized spaceship zoom that will become all too familiar by the album's end. The sound, accordingly, becomes more electronic; the musicians, it seems, were chosen for their talents in that direction. But the following song, a version of "Fame," is loose, funky and better than the original, even if it does take four guys to fake "TVC-15," a companion song from the album Station to Station that has Bowie growling lyrics about his favorite android...
Like any Bowie effort, parts of Stage improve with repeated listening; parts wear thin. The album is as schizophrenic as its creator. It avoids retracing the anthologizing effort of Changes One; nor does it chart Bowie's future course with clarity. Prospective members of the Official International Fan Club who want some new sounds will simply have to wait...