BLONDIE - POLLINATOR

Have Blondie caught up with modern pop or has modern pop caught up with Blondie? Certainly they've roped in all their hippest fans - including Charli XCX, Nick Valensi and Sia - to help ensure their new album has a contemporary gloss. However, it's when the band are prepared to simply act as throwbacks to the New Wave they helped invent that Pollinator really sizzles. Opening trio Doom Or Destiny, Long Time and Already Naked could have been lifted from anything the band released in their late-1970s heyday. Elsewhere, they veer a bit too far from the classic formula: funk-inflected Love Level, complete with quasi-rap interludes, is as bizarre as it is appalling, while electro-pop lead single Fun comes off a bit dad-dancing-at-the-disco. They're fooling nobody but, if you squint, you can still make out the ghosts of those cool, skinny New Yorkers on the cover of Parallel Lines.

7/10

(Review by James Robinson)