Clem Burke will be heard once more on a new Blondie album. High Noon arrives on February 26, 2027, with the late drummer’s final recordings and thirteen songs. “Spectral Eyes,” released today, is the first of them. The record is Blondie’s twelfth studio album and will come out through BMG.
Burke played on every Blondie album. That is a remarkable thread to run through a band’s catalogue, and it makes his place on High Noon more than an incidental credit. For a long-term listener, part of the interest will be hearing that continuity inside a fresh group of songs. There is a new record to discover, as well as a musician to remember.
The band’s public introduction talks about influences from different periods of their lives coming together in the present. The collaborators give that idea some substance. Johnny Marr and Glen Matlock are on the list, along with Zach Condon of Beirut and the Lucius duo of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig. Blondie describe rock and punk meeting dance and Latin rhythms. How those pieces fit together will be one reason to return when the complete album is here.
For now, there are two ways to approach the opener. The full “Spectral Eyes” single is out, while the artist’s website also has an instrumental running four minutes and nine seconds. We like the practical possibility of putting the vocal aside for a listen. A part that sits behind a singer can become the thing you follow once that singer is absent. Then the vocal version lets you hear where your attention goes back.
“Heartbreak Kid” and “Come Back Home” follow the single on the tracklist, which ends with “Ah, Sunflower, Weary of Time.” The artwork has its own way of bringing the band into view. It shows them in an office beneath a newspaper-style masthead dated February 26, 2027. To us, that front-page treatment fits a record carrying fresh news and a great deal of history in the same package.
High Noon’s history should be described carefully. The album contains Burke’s final recording work with Blondie; the announcement does not call it Blondie’s final album. Nor is this a reissue. In our coverage of the Brian Eno catalogue reissues, the attraction was renewed access to earlier work, with extras. Here the familiar musicians are adding a new sequence to the catalogue. The sense of an ending around Burke sits within that ongoing creative work.
CD, cassette and vinyl editions are listed, including red and black vinyl. Selected merchandise bundles contain a signed twelve-inch print. That last detail is worth checking if you are buying for an autograph: the print is the signed item. Otherwise, the simplest starting point costs no such decision. There is a new Blondie single to hear, and a date to keep for the rest.
