It’s been both fascinating and a little strange to see Debbie Harry age into something of a synthpop torch singer. There’s a smokiness to the wear in her voice that doesn’t so much damage or limit it as it does give it a weight of experience, and it shows even through production that’s meant to be blatantly rejuvenating. The new-stuff half of last year’s two-fer stretches pretty far to maintain Blondie’s place in the present way of dance-punk things instead of just making them a key legacy act, with featured guests scrambling all over the place to bolster the stylistic versatility Blondie’s long been known for. So you get Colombian collective Systema Solar infusing “Sugar on the Side” with a hooky cumbia thump, Beth Ditto joining in on the modern-electro jam “A Rose By Any Other Name,” and Spanish-language reggaeton/hip-hop verses from Oakland’s Los Rakas on “I Screwed Up.”

It sure beats the Rod Stewart approach of making a beeline for Ye Olde Standards when you’re someone from the ’70s hitting your seventies, but it still ricochets a bit from modern relevance to retro comfortability, and some of it’s way too cute for its own good. (What if Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” actually sounded relaxed?) Harry and Stein mostly concocted the music themselves through digital means and with an army of production assistants, and while that doesn’t sting as much as it feels like it should, even the involvement of Blondie’s two most integral songwriters can’t keep it from feeling like a Debbie Harry solo record in all but name. Then there’s the weirder half of this package, the Deluxe Redux bit, where Harry performs Blondie Karaoke over re-recorded backing tracks that sound like a pretty decent tribute band at best and weakly redundant at worst. If you’re looking for proof that Blondie still have that spark, neither disc does much to ease any skepticism.