Skip to main content

Pop queen Debbie Harry uncovers her torchy side


NEW YORK — "I don't know: Have we fulfilled our obligation?" Debbie Harry nervously wondered out from the stage of Café Carlyle on Tuesday evening after performing around a dozen songs. Behind that question was an implied plea: "How soon will this torture end, so can I get out of here?"

The occasion was the opening-night show of her wildly anticipated, sold-out debut engagement at the club, the former stomping ground of Bobby Short, who died almost exactly 10 years ago. In her own way, Harry, 69, is as much a pop legend as Short.

Making a grand entrance in a black leather jacket and tinted sunglasses, she was every inch the platinum-haired downtown bad girl and face of the seminal, still-extant post-punk band Blondie. She resembled a tabloid American Catherine Deneuve. Instead of a band, she brought with her a one-man computer-and-synthesizer sound machine in the person of Blondie's current keyboardist, Matt Katz-Bohen, who also played a little piano and guitar.

Those hoping that Harry would sing Blondie hits like "Rapture," "Heart of Glass" and "Call Me" were treated to a program of songs taken mostly from her uneven solo albums, whose musical styles ranged from poppy dance numbers like her minor 1986 hit, "French Kissin,'" to more sophisticated ballads like "Imitation of a Kiss," which she recorded with the Jazz Passengers.

Many of these songs are pungent slices of life seen through the persona of a B-movie temptress who has been around the block enough times to be unfazed by anything that crosses her path. Harry is allergic to sentimentality, yet under the blasé surface is a smoky torch singer struggling to emerge.

But only on her recordings does the complicated persona of a city girl navigating a neon jungle of tough guys, molls and outsiders come into focus. Katz-Bohen's abrasive arrangements couldn't compensate for the lack of a band. An indication of the show's rawness was Harry's having to read many of the songs off a music stand.

Nothing could camouflage Harry's vocal difficulties. She was so consistently off-pitch that the songs nearly disappeared under her struggle to sing the notes. The show was the professional equivalent of a very shaky audition.

Debbie Harry performs through April 4 at Café Carlyle, 35 E. 76th St., Manhattan; 212-744-1600, thecarlyle.com.