Devo – New Traditionalists – 1981
Ah, success.
Following the success of their massive top 40 hit, “Whip It” and with a healthy disdain for their new-to-the-cause fans, Devo came out the next year with their most synthetic sounding album to date. I’ve already discussed in the last post the reasoning for marginalizing the guitars and it’s really evident here. More than noticeable. This is the sound that would mire down bands like Sparks and The Cars. The affection for the disaffected sound of synths.
That said, much of this album is poppier than one would have expected, but that’s most likely due to the instrumentation. The collection of songs from “Through Being Cool” to “Pity You” and others show a strong disdain for their status as pop icons. I mean, Devo were supposed to be artists, right? They were Warholian to the t, no?
The hit “Beautiful World” suffers from sounding just like Sparks “Cool Places”, obviously the latter is inspired by the Devo tune which came out 2 years earlier. The Sparks song is better but the Devo song has Marco Pirroni-esque guitars.
This album is the first time Devo produced themselves and it shows, there’s no one to stop them from the keys-implosion.
The result is a rather tedious affair. A smattering of hooks here and an occasional catchy track there, but otherwise, this is a lackluster affair.
Grade: C-
ASide: Through Being Cool, Jerkin Back n Forth, Beautiful World
BlindSide:
DownSide: Soft Things, The Super Thing
