New Wave

After punk cleared the ’70s pop/rock palate by bringing things back to basics, new wave fashioned a fresh face for a new era, energized by punk, but free to wander wherever the hooks happened to lead. For synthesizer-toting duo Soft Cell, that meant an electro-soul reinvention of Gloria Jones’ pleading ’60s R&B chestnut “Tainted Love.” For first-generation CBGB punks Blondie, it involved dipping into disco for the Giorgio Moroder-worshipping hypno-pop hit “Heart of Glass.” And in Squeeze’s case, it meant tapping former pub-rocker Paul Carrack (who hit with Ace’s “How Long” in ’74), who lent his soulful tones to the Motown-molded “Tempted” for the band’s U.S. pop breakthrough.

Neuroses were never so much as when new wave got a hold of them — hear it happen in Next Steps.

New wave boasted plenty of pop appeal, but that doesn’t mean it was all sweetness and smiley faces. Nervous energy and an off-kilter edge fueled the scene’s defining tunes. Elvis Costello comes off like a murder suspect sweating beneath the interrogation-room spotlight, over the tight reggae riddim of “Watching the Detectives.” Gordon Gano sputters, stutters, and mutters with manic intensity on Violent Femmes’ unplugged angst-pop classic “Blister In the Sun.” And Joe Jackson feels the frustration of a love locked out when he vents his spleen against roughneck Romeos on “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”

Hear the heartbeat of new wave, from melancholy missives to soulful statements, in Deep Cuts.

Despite its edge and its ultra-cool image, new wave still had a big, sloppy heart beating at its center. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis’ tragic, keyboard-kissed farewell letter to a world too treacherous for his fragile emotions. ABC adds ’80s new romantic glamour to ’70s Philly soul flavors for an A-to-Z tour of romance gone wrong on “The Look of Love, Pt. 1.” And Richard Butler’s nicotine-stained croon on The Psychedelic Furs’ sweetly sinister “Love My Way” had legions of love-struck, black-eyeliner-clad girls breathlessly wondering just what his way might be.

New wave was about a lot more than wearing skinny ties and sporting gravity-defying haircuts. It was about breaking from the past to find a new sound for a new generation, but without abandoning perennial pop essentials like an unforgettable melody and a charisma-coated vocal. From its late-’70s start to its mainstream breakthrough in the ’80s, new wave washed up on scores of stylistic shores. The funk-inflected new romantic dance-rock of Duran Duran’s lupine love song “Hungry Like the Wolf,” the sun-baked reggae rumbling beneath Aussie icons Men At Work’s “Down Under,” the synth-sational auto erotica of Gary Numan’s electro-pop trailblazer “Cars” . . . If you really want to ride the wave, you’ve got to have them all — and now you can, with just a single click.