El Guapo
Super/System

Among the many bands of the 2000s that are heavily inspired by New Wave, El Guapo seems to have an edge.
Unlike many "little fans" who cleverly capitalize on the nostalgia effect and produce, at best, just a good revival, the trio from Washington D.C. has managed to create (at least for this record) music that, although evidently inspired by the tradition of the genre in question, would have been impossible to make twenty-five years ago due to reasons of technique, sound, and mindset.

It's difficult to find reference names to give an idea of their work, except, at least partially, the Devo. The legendary group from Akron always used arrangements that were already part of rock's heritage, but their style was revolutionary in its obsessively repetitive manner, making it seem like every musician played as if they were a stuck rock'n'roll record repeating the same note, the same guitar riff, and the same drumbeat.

El Guapo, if possible, takes this style to the extreme by offering arrangements that are even shorter and more elementary (thus further exacerbating the repetition), they reject the classic song form by abruptly "cutting off" the end of tracks and use the voice only for nonsensical choruses without melody (or, if you prefer, repetitive verses); all enriched by a variety of sounds and samples impossible for their predecessors for obvious reasons.

Exemplary of this modern "devolved" style are the opening, pounding "My Bird Sing", which vaguely recalls "Uncontrollable Urge", "Rumbledream", which seems like a parody of Suicide by Devo themselves, and "Actual Sound" that, together with "Inevitability", presents a truly original use of the accordion.
Elsewhere, a naive mainly electronic experimentalism takes over: the drum machine and stuttering vocal effects of "Rhyme Scene/Rhyme Dream", the lobotomized Kraftwerk in "Laser Eyes", the robot ducks quacking in "Faith-Based Music", the electronic chant of "Buildables", are all lightning tracks revolving around curious arrangements and tricks with great humor and programmed craziness.

With this album, El Guapo demonstrates that the New Wave from a quarter-century earlier is a mine of ideas still developable with astonishing results.