Unnatural selections
and earworm infections

Twenty years after their last album, seminal
synth-punks Devo return to a world at once
darker and more hopeful—and continue their
crusade to counteract corporate media from
the inside

BAND U WANT: Mark Mothersbaugh (C) and Devo

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

“In our most paranoid fantasies,” says Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh over the phone, “de-evolution was never going to be like it is today. It wasn’t going to be sitting here watching oil spew into the gulf 24-7. It wasn’t going to be the politics we’ve had for the past 30 years.”

That’s saying something, given the giddy paranoia and sharp sociocultural critique permeating the idiosyncratic synth-punk of Akron, Ohio’s favourite sons, whose name referred to a theory of “de-evolution,” a downward spiral into toxic artificiality, ruthless totalitarianism and willful ignorance they saw plaguing the world and specifically the United States. Mothersbaugh doesn’t hesitate to cite Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy as another illustration of the principle.

In 1973, Mothersbaugh, fellow Kent State art student Gerald Casale and their friends began a career that predicted new wave while mocking it and penetrated the highest echelons of pop culture with radically subversive intentions.

“The big difference for us is that 35 years ago, it was a hard sell, that things were falling apart and that we should pay attention to it. Now you talk to people about it and they go, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, things are crazy, man—hey, let’s party!’”

Chinese rock, Chinese rockets

If one must indeed dance while the world crumbles, one could do worse than to slap on some Devo, whose ridiculously catchy tunes—most notably their 1980 hit “Whip It”—betray a more upbeat attitude than their almost apocalyptic inspirations suggest.

“I’m a total optimist on one level,” Mothersbaugh acknowledges. “I worry about the things that I see that are obvious that they’re wrong, but at the same time, you have to remember that things like technology are benign. It’s the human mind that makes a difference in how it gets used.”

Unsurprisingly, Mothersbaugh sees the music industry’s paradigm shift as a great thing, pointing out how any kid is now a Google search away from finding and enjoying “Canadian death-metal polka Eskimo music” or “Chinese computer rock-’n’-roll square-dancing music.”

“If you’re getting into music because you want to be a rock star, unfortunately you’re probably 20, 30 years too late. But if you’re here because you’re an artist who has something to say and you’re looking for a way to do it, it’s easier and more interesting now than ever before. You know, I feel sorry for the record companies.”

Really? Sympathy for the suits?

“For about two seconds, I do. But y’know, come on! They had a nice long run. The way audiences receive music, the way you and I listen to music, has forever been changed. I mean, up until the Chinese launch some missiles and take out every satellite that works with the Internet. Then we have to go back to playing things on home instruments again—which wouldn’t be so bad. That’s how it was for eons.

“Technology has allowed us to do things that nobody even really thought possible, even people that were extrapolating and dreaming about what the future was gonna be. I only wish I was a 20-year-old musician right now.”

Satisfaction guaranteed

Wishing to be 20 is one thing. Succeeding in sounding far younger and more energized than a bunch of guys entering their 60s, as Devo do on Something for Everybody, their first album in two decades, is another.

“Y’know, that’s why we decided that now is the time,” Mothersbaugh laughs. “We wanted to be part of that before we were too old to do it!”

It’s a rock-solid record that kicks off with the lead single “Fresh” and sounds, well, just that. “The one thing that stayed intact, and we’re lucky for this, is that what Devo was about, essentially, was we obviously had a particular take on the planet, talking about de-evolution. We’re still using the filter. We still have our own particular take on the human condition, but we also write songs the same way. Although the technology has changed—it did through every album. No two albums sound the same. We were always employing new technology when it came out, drum machines or MIDI or sampling.”

Or that thing that goes whuh-kssshhhh on “Whip It”—it’s an EML 500, according to Mothersbaugh, and it makes a couple of appearances on Something for Everybody.

“It doesn’t look so pretty but it’s still alive, we can still fire it up in the studio to get it to work. So there are a lot of things that are the same. The big, important difference on this record was the producers that we work with now. We were always so protective about everything in the past because people didn’t really get it. Even our record companies labelled us ‘quirky,’ which was such an irritating term to me because it was such a write-off. Now, 35 years later, we met people who wanted to work with us who said they grew up listening to our music. I realized that they had a take on Devo 2010 that was kinda the way I felt excited about redoing the song ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones in 1974, making it relevant for the ’70s.

“This was a time when we were able to let go of the steering wheel and let producers do what they do best, which is make it sound relevant to the radio, the computer and your MP3 player. Everybody that worked on it, from Greg Kurstin to Santigold and a Dust Brother, really brought something to the mix.”

Mutating messages

What separated Devo from their punk-rock contemporaries, aside from those flower-pot “energy dome” hats and matching jumpsuits, was a jiu-jitsu approach to the consumer culture the others simply raged against. With Devo and in their own individual careers, Mothersbaugh and Casale in particular have maintained a paradoxical relationship with mainstream corporate media—an elaborate dance in which both partners resent each other but at the same time need to use each other.

They’ve had their major-label exasperations and a tussle with McDonalds over its unauthorized New Wave Nigel toy. Then again, they developed the Devo 2.0 kiddie project for Disney and infiltrated the realms of film scores and TV commercials, selling off “Whip It” for a Swiffer spot and composing for or directing countless others.

“I’ve written music for close to 400 TV commercials—tennis shoes, food, cars, everything,” says Mothersbaugh. “In the early days, when I wasn’t 100 per cent of what I was doing, I used to put subliminal messages in my music. It was so easy to do that I lost interest after I did about 40 or 50 national or international commercials that had subliminal messages that were oftentimes Devo mantras like ‘Choose your mutations carefully,’ ‘We must repeat,’ things like ‘Question authority’ and sometimes, for products that I just thought weren’t good for people, I put in, like, ‘Sugar is bad for you.’”

Use their illusions

Devo’s pop subversion was triggered—no pun intended—by the National Guard’s shooting of unarmed war protesters, some of whom the band members knew personally, at Kent State University in 1970, where Mothersbaugh and Casale were already fooling around with oppositional art.

“What we took from [the shootings] was that in a democracy, rebellion is obsolete. We watched hippies become hip capitalists. Same thing with the punks—we watched nihilism and anarchy become a fashion statement, safety pins and blue Mohawks and fashion design and Vivienne Westwood haute couture. It became co-opted by democracy and capitalism.

“We thought, how do change things in our culture? We looked around for who did it best, and it resonated with our interest in people like Andy Warhol, who were already blurring the line between pop art and consumerism. We just thought, we’re taking it a step further because we see Madison Avenue as actually being subversive in their ability to co-opt people’s brains and influence the way people thought about, usually, things that weren’t even good for them. They got people to eat food that was poison, basically, over the last 40 years, and sold them inferior cars and everything.

“The techniques are what are important. How do they do that? It wasn’t by head-on confrontation, because the powers-that-be in a capitalist culture, those people are more powerful than you. They have many ways of shutting you down short of shooting you—but they will shoot you if they need to.”

WITH WEEZER, DEADMAU5, SONIC
YOUTH, SNOOP DOGG AND MORE AT
OSHEAGA (DAY 2) AT PARC
JEAN-DRAPEAU ON SUNDAY, AUG. 1, 1 P.M.,
$65 (WEEKEND PASS $120), ALL AGES