Last month, Blondie released the expansive Against the Odds box set, which takes a deep dive into the influential new wave band’s past. But the group is also looking toward the future with a new studio album that founding drummer Clem Burke says is due out next year.
“I think it’s gonna come out in the spring,” Burke tells ABC Audio. “I think we’re pretty much on track for that. And we have been getting a lot of interesting offers to play live next year at festivals that we are probably going to do, in conjunction with the release of the album.”
Blondie started work on the album before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Burke says delayed the project.
“Yeah, we put that process on hold until we were all able to be in the studio together,” the 67-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer explains, “’cause we wanted to follow suit with the way we did our last album of new music, [2017’s] Pollinator.”
Burke says the upcoming record was made with the same producer who worked on Pollinator, John Congleton.
Pollinator featured several guest collaborators, including former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, who wrote the song “My Monster.” Clem says Marr has also written a track that’s expected to appear on the new album.
Meanwhile, Burke reports that original Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, who filled in for Blondie’s bassist, Leigh Fox, on their recent tour dates, also contributed to the upcoming record.
In addition, Clem reveals the album will include “a very left-field cover” of a song by a 1960s New York underground band “that will be very surprising for a lot of people,” and that’s “not The Velvet Underground.”
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