By 2003, you could add a newer wave of new wavers to the legacy of hot indie artists that owed at least something to that first late-’70s stretch of Blondie classics. (Let’s face it: There are many more cuts on those first couple Strokes albums that sound like “One Way Or Another” than there are ones that sound like “Venus In Furs,” and we’re all the better for it.) So if there was a time for the original Hot NYC New Wave Band That Broke Huge to re-stake a claim on the real estate they helped develop, it was the early aughts. Still, while No Exit felt positioned as an originators’ riposte to the assorted Garbages and No Doubts that had been portrayed by alt-rock media as next-gen Blondies, The Curse Of Blondie isn’t really a reaction, a retort, or an attempt to grab some elder-spokesmodel sovereignty over a scene they once ruled.

What it is, exactly, still feels like an attempt — sometimes successful — to recapture their grasp on the pop consciousness in a way that the catching-up No Exit couldn’t always manage. To that end, “Good Boys” is the unqualified triumph of the record, a surgical strike of electro-pop that sounds appropriately icy and could sit well next to Ladytron in DJ sets. You kind of have to dig for the rest, since producer Steve Thompson steers their sound towards a borderline-aggro alt-rock bombast that has too much overproduced bloat to do justice to the band’s traditionally nuanced less-is-more style. (For some reason most of Chris Stein’s guitar parts sound like he’s auditioning for Def Leppard.) There are still some strong songs underneath all that, though — “Rules For Living” captures Harry’s characteristic ambivalence in a search for love cut with deja vu, and the lovers rock “Background Melody (The Only One)” finds grace in the potentially mortifying subject of addressing all the listeners who owe their existence to her music — both literally and figuratively.