Blondie have set a date for their twelfth studio album, breaking a nine year stretch without a full body of new music. Titled High Noon, the record arrives on February 26 via BMG, though the announcement brings both celebration and a heavy sense of closure. The release includes the final recordings made by Clem Burke, the band's longtime drummer and founding pillar, who died last year after living with cancer. Burke laid down his drum tracks during New York sessions that began in 2022, ensuring his signature percussive pulse sits at the heart of this final statement.
The first preview of the thirteen song collection is Spectral Eyes, issued alongside the album news. Written by Johnny Marr, who also handles guitar duties on the recording, the single pulls directly from the distinct sonic character that initially launched the group. It balances ringing guitar parts with driving vocal work and a hypnotic refrain, showing how naturally Marr's songwriting fits into Blondie's established world.
To capture the material, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein returned to producer John Congleton, teaming up with him for the first time since their 2017 record, Pollinator. Working together in New York, the group aimed to draw their wide variety of musical impulses into a unified release. According to Harry, the record functions as quintessential Blondie, blending their past eras and broad interests into fresh songs shaped by where the musicians stand today. Stein shared his own reflections on their staying power, observing that after such an extended and unusual journey, his primary feeling is appreciation for the audience that remained by their side across the decades.
Musically, High Noon relies on the band's core punk background while reaching into Latin rhythms and dance arrangements, keeping faith with their long tradition of looking beyond single genre boundaries. They have invited several notable collaborators into the studio for the effort. Former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock contributed the song Sleepwalking, while Beirut leader Zach Condon joins the credits alongside Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius.
The full run of thirteen tracks gathers songs titled Heartbreak Kid, Come Back Home, Tambo Tambo, Man Who Had No Face, The End, Whistle Into The Wind, Antifreeze, East of Eden, Bad Underwear, and the final piece, Ah, Sunflower, Weary of Time. Among these, the band also looked back to their own extended circle by recording Little Metal Drummer. That selection originally appeared on Heart On A Wall, the debut solo record from co-founding keyboard player Jimmy Destri, which binds the new release directly to an earlier chapter in the band's history.
The visual direction for High Noon was shaped by artist and director Rob Roth, whose collaboration with Blondie dates back to their 1999 reunion set, No Exit. Roth, who also recently created fresh artwork for that album's initial release on vinyl, designed the new imagery to exist across multiple eras at once, drawing on different points from the group's past while looking forward. When High Noon appears in February, it will document how those long standing partnerships and surviving ideas still fit together.
