Album: Blondie, Panic of Girls (EMI / Eleven Seven)

Blondie are the most reluctantly retro of bands, their leader a heritage heroine who hates being treated like a museum piece.

One has to admire a woman who, at 65, would still rather push things forward than look over her shoulder. So while PoG indubitably carries the DNA of classic Blondie, it's retooled for the 21st century.

The first punk band to embrace disco ("Heart of Glass") and hip-hop ("Rapture"), they unapologetically rip into this album with a pulsating and mangled electro-pop opener called "D-Day", and rarely, if ever, lapse into giving people a poor photocopy of Parallel Lines. There's one bum note in the form of a cover of Sophie George's dreadful 1980s reggae hit "Girlie Girlie" ("Hey, 'Tide Is High' did pretty well for us 29 years ago...). Other than that, "Le Bleu", a charming bit of chanson, is about as old-fashioned as it gets. For that, respect is due.