Devo
New Traditionalists

THE REVIEW

The depth of the Devo project is immense. An abyss, an institution.

Aware of the change in social lifestyle, the mechanical man, technology, and the "modernist" nightmare are increasingly powerful. The Eighties are a period of transition, the foundation for all the evils crafted in the Nineties, but also bearers of that uniquely unrepeatable hope. It's that flair that Byrne & Co. expressed after the Kraftwerk shock.

The first and colossal debut album is the home of "Mongoloid," "Jocko Homo," and all that irresistible plasticity.

The song form had already undergone a thousand transformations... it had transitioned from krautrock to new wave in five or six years, recording the climax of the "new wave" in the early Eighties. Beyond the sugary Cars and the big keyboards of Ultravox, proving that Devo is not a flash in the pan come the galactic "Freedom Of Choice," "Girl U Want," "Peek-A-Bo," and "Time Out For Fun." Their Zappa-esque idiot songs mixed into white and black keys and the fun drum kits cannot disappear.

Indeed, the fourth work, dated 1981, is named "New Traditionalists," but there's nothing standard about it. In the end, every artist must reach a universal aim: to compose melody, sound, sequences, harmony, frequencies. With Devo, we manage to soar over the schizoid mechanisms of these five aliens.

What surprises us is the electro rock'n'roll of "Through Being Cool" and the relentless "Jerkin Back 'N Forth." However, the levels decidedly rise with "Going Under," where we imagine Joey Ramone transported onto the Devo spaceship and softened by electro patterns.

But "Beautiful World" stands as the absolute peak of the work. Even if it has nothing to do with it, I'm very curious to think if it had been composed by Byrne... Ah, what am I saying... here we don't even think of the Talking Heads. They don't make us regret anything.

"It's a beautiful world, for you

It's a beautiful world, not me"