{"id":41917,"date":"2010-03-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-hunter\/"},"modified":"2010-03-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T00:00:00","slug":"the-hunter","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-hunter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, how the mighty fall. I can\u2019t quite work out exactly when Blondie\u2019s bubble burst or where they misplaced their once-potent mojo, but it sure as hell came to a head with The Hunter<\/i>. Not only does this pile of you-know-what hold the distinction of being far and away the worst Blondie album ever, it also marked the end of the once great band.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Following this album and a short farewell tour, the group decided to split and Harry spent the rest of the decade forging a respectable solo career, all while nursing her man Chris Stein back to health after he nearly died following a severe bout of pemphigus. His story of survival and Harry\u2019s effervescent solo career is a whole lot more interesting than The Hunter<\/i>, <\/i>so I\u2019ll keep this brief and as pain-free as I can.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Never before had this band struggled to write a tune, and although a couple of dubious attempts at monkeying with the formula on 1980\u2019s Autoamerican<\/i> should have sounded alarm bells, they went right ahead and did just about the opposite of everything they had ever succeeded with before. Just what they were hoping for, who knows, but try listening to \u201cThe Beast\u201d more than once and you\u2019ll get my point. Even worse than its muffled production and guitar wankery is the outright abomination that is \u201cThe Hunter Gets Captured By The Game,\u201d one of Smokey Robinson\u2019s best songs.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

If you want to hear how to update and rework a gem like that, then check out Grace Jones\u2019 version, which is pure gold. The generic pop of \u201cDragonfly, \u201cIsland Of Lost Souls,\u201d and \u201cOrchid Club\u201d do nothing to even remotely salvage this disaster, and when \u201cWar Child\u201d appears halfway through, it manages to drag this thing into even lower depths. \u201cLittle Caesar\u201d should have been a reggae-tinged gem like their take on \u201cThe Tide Is High,\u201d but the stupid horns and inane lyrics wreck any chance of redemption with this one as well.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cEnglish Boys\u201d would have been charming if it hadn\u2019t been dumped on with the rancid collection of garbage it\u2019s lumped with here, but it\u2019s also ruined by the dreadful production qualities (what drugs was Mike Chapman on?). Crap filler like \u201cDanceaway\u201d and \u201cFor Your Eyes Only\u201d just make matters worse again, and I\u2019m glad the producers of the Bond movies passed on the latter for one of their films because it\u2019s actually a solid movie and it could only have been hampered by this dreadful attempt at reliving the \u201860s. That in itself is so surprising because Blondie peppered their early albums with vibrant expressions of the \u201860s on cuts like \u201cKung Fu Girls\u201d and \u201cDenis.\u201d\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re an obsessive completist or you worship daily at the temple of Ms. Harry, then don\u2019t go anywhere near The Hunter<\/i>.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":30265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7696],"rating":[5620],"class_list":["post-41917","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-blondie","rating-rating-f"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41917"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}