15th September 2007
CD REVIEWS
POP
Deborah Harry
Necessary Evil
Eleven Seven/Universal, £12.99
With a musical full of Blondie songs about to open in London, and the band themselves still going strong live, it seems a strange time for their iconic singer to release her first solo album in 14 years
Necessary Evil, claims Ms Harry, entails her “moving forward”. It was mostly produced and co-written by Super Buddha, a male/female duo from Brooklyn who have worked with the Scissor Sisters and Rufus Wainwright, and who chisel out that wishy-washy radio-friendly sound, half hi-tech R&B pop, half pallid guitar rock.
Its unsuitability for Harry, now 62, is underlined when the idea of text messaging crops up in a lyric, among other adolescent musings on the nature of love. Virtually the whole album should have been sung by someone 45 years younger. Coming from Harry, a much loved eccentric, it feels both unrepresentative and rather embarrassing.
Andrew Perry.
