No Exit

1	Screaming Skin 5:35
2	Forgive and Forget (Pull Down the Night) 4:31
3	Maria 4:51
4	No Exit 4:19
5	Double Take 4:12
6	Nothing Is Real But The Girl 3:13
7	Boom Boom In The Zoom Zoom Room 4:08
8	Night Wind Sent 4:40
9	Under the Gun (For Jeffery Lee Pierce) 4:09
10	Out In The Streets 3:03
11	Happy Dog (For Caggy) 3:24
12	The Dream's Lost On Me 3:19
13	Divine 4:14
14	Dig Up The Conjo 4:55

Barnes & Noble

Reunions make for great hype, but -- with very few exceptions -- nostalgia is better on tour than on disc. Blondie's comeback release, NO EXIT, adds weight to that tenet. The group picks up where it left off, which is fine for those yearning for 1982. Part of the group's original charm was its eclecticism, but in the nearly two decades since they last mattered, Blondie's optimistic variety of dilettantism has come to look naive and simplistic. Why revive that? The other aspects of Blondie fare better: Clem Burke's drumming has grown enormously since those "Heart of Glass" days, and Debbie Harry's singing maintains a cheerful insolence. Yet as they hopscotch from lounge to faux country to the obligatory rap (featuring Coolio), there's a sense that this recording is little more than a PLASTIC LETTERS for the new millennium. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

Once you've cherished Blondie you never really go back, even if for half of your life you must cherish them out of forgiveness, or just plain heartfelt concern. Debbie Harry loves to make curious decisions about her music, and it's always important to listen to her work carefully and several times (while trying to keep her performance in John Waters' Hairspray either firmly in, or out, of your mind as you do). In the old days, Harry and her guys covered terrific old blues and trippy, backwater pieces, popped up and pretty, punkified, otherwise unremarkable rock tunes, and flat out treated us to a show, whether live or Memorex. No Exit is a gritty downtown incarnation that almost sounds like a cutting room castaway, filled with raw and abject moments and digressions that suggest an improvised, irrelevant feel. The talkative "Screaming Skin" is a lyrically confused, stream of consciousness piece that sounds as if it was written on a paper bag on the subway -- and some people really like this stuff. But some of the instrumental tracks have the veneer of an afterthought, particularly in the percussion department. Miss Debbie is always at her rockin' finest when futzing with the blues (and country, really), which she does on most of the latter half of the disc like the consummate, crazy pro that she is. If nothing else, No Exit is a testament to authentic rock and roll durability, and, well, the abiding "wow" that is Debbie Harry. Becky Byrkit