Devo

Huge, portentous chords open this album but it isn’t ‘Thriller’ it is ‘Fresh’ – Devo back after 20 years and doing all those things they do best.

This sounds like the most eighties album you ever heard in your life. Synth beats and and that thing where the vocal is set just back from the front and you can hear a real lineal trace from the last Devo album ‘Smooth Noodle Maps’ except, frankly, this pees over anything the have done since ‘Freedom of Choice’ or maybe even ‘Duty Now For The Future’ – geddit?, this is stunning and it would be in 1979, 1999 or 2010.

The lyrics are classic Devo, none more so that ‘What we Do’ where the vocals loom out from a miasma of synth and beats – “What we do is what we do cos all we do is what we do”, a diatribe against the modern society and its addiction to communication by electronics. Brilliant counterpoint as they have found themselves in sync with modern society and aren’t exactly happy about it!

The overriding sound of this album is beats, fast beats, slow beats, twisted beats, rock beats, you can dance to all of it but when you listen closely the lyrics are telling stories you might not be comfortable with but this has always been Devo’s way.
There is less deliberate awkwardness to the sound but there is still nothing here that sounds like anyone else, there is plenty though that will have you thinking “Now where did I hear THAT ...” until you realise that it isn’t Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran or Ultravox, this lot have corrupted that classic sound, added their own perversions and produced the best album any of those band never did.

Check out ‘What We Do’, ‘Human Rocket’, ‘Sumthin’, or ‘Cameo’ for great Devo numbers but the best of all is ‘March On’ – archetypal Devo and I defy you to avoid images of marching children or even to start marching on the spot; it isn’t just insistent, it nags at you for hours afterwards.

Welcome back to the Mothersbaughs & Casales – we’ve missed you.