The Hunter

Product Information

The Hunter is the sixth studio album by American rock band Blondie, released on May 24, 1982, by Chrysalis Records.

For war child alone, this gets 4 stars, the rest of the album is best described as patchy, which is sad in a way because every album up to this point in Blondie's career was pretty much without fault. The trouble is, so intent is Blondie on making bold statements about contemporary malaise, and underscoring them with portentousness, that even on the most upbeat numbers you find that you’re reacting dispassionately (as in think, ponder, ruminate) as opposed to emotively (as in get up, dance, involve yourself). I guess part of the reason why some people think this is the worst Blondie album ever is because it's so damn serious. However, there is no denying that the songs on _The Hunter_ lack the punch and bite of earlier efforts. The high amount of reverb plus the lack of general sharpness makes this shit sound too airy and distant for this kind of music.

The Hunter would not be followed up until 17 years later when Blondie reformed and released their seventh studio album No Exit. The first single (and also the only single released from this record) "Island of Lost Souls" is a calypso-flavored gem. But even though band was coming apart at the seams emotionally, I still feel like the music on this record is solid and experimental, more so than any other Blondie album.

Determined to end on a high at the same time as having the desire to pursue solo projects, particularly the band's lead singer and obvious focal point Debbie Harry (Deborah Harry), it seemed as if Blondie would take great memories of a string of hits with them as they went. The implication, I suppose, is that the pursuit of pleasure and excess finally overtakes the pursuer, and that you wind up lost on a spiral staircase of sensual diversion, left with only the diversion itself to contemplate. It's the most exotic and experimental of the original Blondie records, a theme extended to the rather tragic cover art, and at times sounds tighter than _Autoamerican_, which at times sounded as if it was about to be enveloped by its own schizophrenic diversity and experimentation. The band was a pioneer in the early American new wave and punk scenes of the mid- 70s, developing their sound in famous NYC clubs such as CBGBs. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.The final three tracks are the most casual and melancholy starting with, "(Can I) Find the Right Words (To Say)" which is a beautiful ballad with a great synth. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Debbie's lyrics on "The Beast" are so snarky and biting, I love that side of her songwriting: "For the first time in my life, the bouncers would greet me/the doormen would escort me/managers adored me. The producers of the film, however, favored a track composed by Bill Conti and Michael Leeson and asked Blondie to record that song instead. It's not really a gem, but it's certainly underrated and also hugely diverse (the intense jungle rock of "Orchid Club," the sci-fi "Dragonfly," reggae of "Island of Lost Souls" and "Little Caesar," low-key jazz of the Smokey Robinson cover "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game"), which makes for an adventurous listen.There are exceptions: Jimmy Destri’s “Danceway” is an organ-driven raver that rocks out to a rope-skipping beat, and Debbie Harry assays a sweetly backward-glancing vocal on “English Boys. The next track, "Danceway" written by keyboardist Jimmy Destri (the songs he wrote for the band are genius) steps slightly away from the jungle theme. At this point in their career it's obvious the band was going to break up soon enough unfortunately; I'm of the mind that believes they still had more to deliver in the early 80s, but perhaps The Hunter isn't that bad of a send off in hindsight.

It ain't the worst thing I've heard in a while, but it's easily the worst Blondie album I've checked out so far, with potential strong cuts like "Dragonfly" getting tarnished with dumb moments, though I do like the Bond film toss-off. The second single, "War Child," is an interesting stab at early '80s electro-rock that hit the UK Top 40, while "English Boys" is a surprisingly mid-tempo mellow pop number about The Beatles. Blondie implodes Blondie waited too long between Autoamerican and this album -- a year-and-a-half is several lifetimes in pop music -- and the world forgot about them. I was hoping that the music would be just as crazy, but after the somewhat promising first track that kinda matches the cover theme, it's generally a slog.Soon, you catch the tantalizing fragrance of sin and temptation: it’s there in the forbidden fruit found on “Island of Lost Souls” and “Orchid Club”; in the city hustler’s patois of “The Beast”; in the paranoid daydreams of violence that undergird “War Child”; and in the speed-freak sci-fi fantasy of “Dragonfly. A curiously poetic and mysterious lyric, delivered in a dreamier side to Harry's voice, glides over the pulsating tribal drums of Clem Burke. The New York-based rock group was briefly under consideration to perform the movie theme before Sheena Easton was chosen. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The song opens with the sound of screaming monkeys, then the synth kicks in, and finally the killer drums.