Blondie’s last album until 1999 sounds like a collapsing point, and for good reason. With Chris Stein’s health issues, drug and money problems throughout the band, and the fatigue that comes with trying to scrape together a contractual obligation record, 1982’s The Hunter was a depressing faceplant of an album right when the new wave zeitgeist Blondie had ruled for the past six years was at its crest. What should’ve been a victory lap has maybe a couple salvageable moments, and one of them — the winking John Barry-goes-mod pastiche “For Your Eyes Only” — is mostly interesting in its historical status as a rejected James Bond theme. “Dragonfly” and “Orchid Club” sound half-finished and tossed off, their synthpop pulses clogged with hesitation and their lyrics sounding like free-association placeholders for words that actually mean something. (When in doubt, just make up a bunch of terms that sound like they came from a sci-fi or pulp-adventure novel.) Throw in a doofy Edward G. Robinson imitation (“Little Caesar”), a disillusioned backwards-looking reminiscence over The Beatles (“English Boys”), and a song about how it sucks being too famous to be able to live your life like a normal person (“The Beast”), and it feels like a band once smartly in tune with pop culture now depended on it entirely just to keep inspired. After The Hunter and its accompanying tour flopped, Blondie were done. The band that should’ve ruled the ’80s were done while the decade was still young, with little of substance to show for it afterwards but an underappreciated Harry solo career and Chris Stein’s crucial work on the Wild Style soundtrack. That’s not the worst legacy, but still: Everyone involved deserved better.