There’s something oddly sinister about Blondie’s second album, a serrated edge showing through the nod-and-wink surface of their pop hooks and new wave cool. It could be the cop car on the cover, or the criminal grime that took the cheery seediness of “X Offender” further into threatening turf (the hoodlum-surfer menace of “Youth Nabbed As Sniper”; “Kidnapper” and its arch scuzz-boogie), or even the title — evoking not just rock-club marquees, but how the cops spell your name out when they take your mugshot. The old critical knock against this one was a flimsy side two, though neither contemporary or recent reviews can agree on what the exceptions to the second-half drag might even be. And it shouldn’t even matter anyways with the one-two closing barrage that crops up here. You get a heavy dose of muscle-car goonstomp nastiness in “Detroit 442,” which compacts Springsteen factory-town ennui into Iggy Pop derangement through tweaker velocity and government-name “Jimmy O dodging flying objects at the show” allusions alike. And “Cautious Lip” is skulking, feral detachment dripping with the aftermath of ’77 Bowie, Harry’s glamorous snarls doing their damnedest to coax the truth out of some reluctant target. The hits are great, of course — “(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear” is a fine example of their knack for hiding sincere aching beneath hip detachment, and the gender-flipped Randy & The Rainbows cover “Denis” broke them across the Atlantic as pop throwbacks of the highest caliber. But the fact that they concealed something a bit meaner, weirder, and smarter than they’d been given credit for makes Plastic Letters feel more special than just a transitional sophomore-slump record.