In what might be the funniest opening salvo in a worth-taking-seriously band’s history, Blondie opens with Debbie Harry at her Shangri-Las sweetest: “I saw you standing on the corner/ You looked so big and fine/I really wanted to go out with you/ So when you smiled, I laid my heart on the line.” The punchline of “X Offender”: the “you” is a cop and the “I” is a prostitute, which makes it a twisted ’70s NYC love song if ever there was one. As much as the Ramones are venerated for twisting ’60s pop and rock into something deeply absurd while maintaining reverence for its power in joy, Blondie pulled it off just as well and managed to add a twist of tongue-in-cheek sex appeal in the bargain. Harry performed like an older-and-wiser version of a girl-group ingenue looking back at her formative years with a jaundiced eye, rearranging the rules of teenage love and heartbreak from what had previously been considered the wrong side of 30.

Other songs pull goofball inspiration from b-movies of both old-school drive-in vintage (“The Attack Of The Giant Ants”) and ’70s grindhouse fare (“Kung Fu Girls”), find complicated love via Sondheim-ian gang warfare (“A Shark In Jets Clothing”), watches men drown in the sea of love (“Man Overboard”) and offers them a double-entendre solace (“Look Good In Blue,” with its immortal line “I could give you some head/ and shoulders to lie on”). The band’s still finding its footing — ballads like “In The Flesh” sound more like throwbacks than callbacks, and given how offbeat “Attack Of The Giant Ants” and “Man Overboard” sound, they hadn’t entirely nailed the ability yet to go Caribbean without making it sound like a goof. But they were close enough to grab at that new wave ideal, with the mean-girl Cinemascope eyeroll of “Rip Her To Shreds” spitting gossip-columnist vitriol like Harry’s preparing herself to find out what it’s like to be a target.