Something for Everybody

Devo - Something for Everybody

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CD Details

Artist: Devo
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2010-06-15
Music Label: Warner Bros.
Product features:

DEVO SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY

Soundtracks:

Fresh
What We Do
Please Baby Please
Don't Shoot (I'm A Man)
Mind Games
Human Rocket
Sumthin'
Step Up
Cameo
Later Is Now
No place Like Home
March On

Music reviews of Something for Everybody

Music Review: "Something for Everybody" Proves that Later is Now!
Rating: 4 Stars

On Tuesday, one of my favorite bands, Devo, released their first new album in twenty years, entitled Something For Everybody. This is clearly cause for celebration. Devo has been a huge influence on my artistic aesthetics since I discovered them in high school. They always felt like strange messengers from a frightening four-color distopian future, where everything has fallen apart and the beautifully mutated populace of a broken America still needed music to dance to.

Since Devo formed in the early 70's, their manifesto has stayed basically the same: the human race is de-evolving as it claims to get more advanced. Therefore, we are all headed for a big mess. The De-Evolutionary Oath that Devo debuted in their film The Beginning Was The End: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution was humorously complacent. One of the lines of the oath is that "the fittest may survive, but the unfit may live". Devo has never had much faith in our ability to transcend our simian routes, so why not have fun while the world ends? We must repeat!

Devo was founded by a bunch of riot-era Kent State art students. and their visuals have always been as important as the music. Mark Motherbaugh is an amazing visual artist. Gerry Casale has always been interested in marrying Devo's music with unique music video concepts and has become a music video director for not just Devo, but other bands as well. The way that Devo presents itself for each album and their elaborate stage performances have always been as important as the music itself.

So, how is this collection of new songs? It's very good. Is the album a classic Devo album, as strong and weird and innovative as Q: Are We Not Men? or Freedom of Choice? Absolutely not. I have huge issues with the flat and uninteresting way this album is produced. It sounds like it's from 1988 or so, and that is a shame. To echo the New York Times review I can't quite tell what any of the new producers (including Santigold) did on this record did to update Devo's sound. The synths and Marks lead vocals are all mixed flatly without much differentiation. The songs still shine through, but the production leaves a lot to be desired. However, is it this record as fun and dancy and clever as, let's say Oh No! It's Devo! or New Traditionalists? Absolutely yes. I love those albums I just name checked like a true Devo-tee and the new album drives through at their frenetic paces, all set to an urgent-synth beat. The punk vitriol of Devo's earlier work has been gone for the entire second half of Devo's discography and it certainly doesn't return here. However, we do get many solid dance and synth-rock songs that are written from the perspective of a bunch of smart guys who aren't getting any younger and aren't getting any more enchanted with the world they live in.

My favorite track on the album is "Don't Shoot, I'm a Man", which sounds like an update of "Big Mess" or "Here to Go". Here, against a bunch of snappy synths, Mark sings about scanning the rooftops of his city for shooters while driving to work in his hybrid car. Eerie lyrical parallels to the DC sniper case from a few years ago make this an exemplary Devo song, one with a dutiful musical drive and heady lyrics, making you dance and think while you're doing it. Devo also gets points for using the term "Don't tase me, bro", in an appropriately funny and eerie way.

There are a lot of other gems on the album as well that I'm happy to recommend. The single, "Fresh" cannibalizes the guitar solo from "Be Stiff" and is huge and awesome in it's sound. "Please Baby Please" has almost an Elvis-style rock n roll feel to it's structure (this album borrows a title from one of Elvis'). "Mind Games" has a great 8-Bit synth-hook and feels like a sequel to "Love Without Anger". As a Devo love song, nothing has ever come close to "Snowball" from Freedom of Choice, but "Mind Games" song makes some interesting points nonetheless.

Unfortunately there are some total duds on this album as well. I don't know how "Cameo" made it on here. It's so, so silly. It feels like an unused track from the pretty much universally disliked Smooth Noodle Maps. The second track on Something For Everybody "What We Do", doesn't do it for me either. The driving repetitiveness of the track and less-than-clever insights in the lyrics feel like the band on autopilot. It's Devo's inability to cut some of it's less than funny moments that has always been a hindrance to it's later albums and it's still true here. It would be a great thing if the bros. Mothersbaugh and Casale could reign in the precociousness every once in a while.

That being said, the last three tracks on the album show a surprising amount of maturity and focus for the band. "Later is Now" is a great song that is the thesis of the record: Devo's predictions have come true and we are living in a fully devolved world. "No Place Like Home" is another one of my favorite songs from the album. In interviews, Gerry Casale has called it a "power-ballad", and although I wouldn't go that far, it is a surprisingly melancholy reflection on the destruction of our planet. The chorus states that "There's no place like home, to return to," a sentiment that can be applied to our entire earth, or the more intimate concepts of growing older and dealing with change. The piano-line in the song is beautiful. So, if we can't return home, how do we cope? We "March On", Devo's rousing conclusion to their new album.

Interestingly, there is a bonus track on the album called "Signal Ready" that I really wish the rest of the album sounded like. It's got a slimy synth feel, a lot like New Traditionalists. Mark's vocals are all fuzzed out. The song has a much stranger and more modern feel than the rest of the album. Certainly worth a listen!

It wouldn't be a true evaluation of Devo's re-introduction to the world-at-large if I didn't comment on all the other media surrounding this record release. Devo hired an ad agency called Mother LA to market the album. Check out that website, their text is completely bizarre. Mother LA came up with the hilarious concept of attempting to make the album as appealing to everyone as humanly possible, hence the title, Something for Everybody.

Internet users participated in two studies for the album, one was a color study that concluded that blue is the most universally pleasing color, hence the new blue energy domes. The other study, a song study, allowed fans to vote on which songs they actually wanted on the new album. There is a purchasable song study version of the album on itunes, but the "official" version of the album is only "80% focus group approved".

Mother has produced a bunch of short films tracking the development of Devo's album and all of them have hit right with me so far. This week, on the day that the album was released Mother LA hosted a live-streamed listening party for only cats (!) and premiered the first episode of a new web-based "reality series" about Devo attempting to create and market this new album. This episode has a very funny part about Devo pitching their "everybody masks" in a meeting with their marketing people and record executives, much to the suits' chagrin. The "everybody masks" are strange, faceless grey masks that allow Devo to attempt to look like everybody else and "reduce the petty differences between people".

Devo are taking their strange "everybody masks" and their new costumes (inspired by Kim-Jong Il!) and touring across the country this summer in support of Something for Everybody. They appear to be playing their songs along with a video track, just like they did with their Oh No! It's Devo tour in 1982. The band has always been such a great marrying of sound and vision, that I am very excited to see this tour when it hits NYC.

So yes, right now I am happy with Devo. I can't completely recommend the new album just on it's own, but the new album along with all the media I've been assaulted with the last few months is a great addition to Devo's catalog. As Devo grow older, they only grow more interesting and relevant.

Duty now for the future. Bombs away.

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Description of Something for Everybody

More than three decades after the release of its visionary debut, 'Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo,' and a full 20 years since its last studio album, Devo is back with the aptly titled 'Something for Everybody.' The long rumored, wildly anticipated album (which was launched with a memorable performance in Vancouver at the Winter Olympics) features the band's classic line-up - Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, Gerald and Bob Casale - joined by drummer Josh Freese (Nine Inch Nails, Guns n' Roses). Though the songs recorded for 'Something for Everybody' are built on Devo's signature mechanized swing, the recording and presentation of the album saw the band experimenting with an entirely new approach. A series of studies were conducted through the clubdevo.com site to help the band with its creative decisions, from color selection to song mixes. In fact, 16 songs were recorded but only 12 made the final album. DEVO invited fans and critics to help select the songs that they liked best to make the cut by participating in a Song Study at clubdevo.com.