Devo - Something for Everybody

Here's how to write every lazy review of ‘Something For Everybody', Devo's first album in 20 years: quote the opening lines from second song ‘What We Do' ("What we do/Is what we do/It's all the same/There's nothing new"). Whack down a paragraph about aging bands rehashing old glories. Smile smugly. Three stars. Early lunch.

It's even harder to criticise such an easy dismissal since it's not particularly unfair: the polished production and vintage synths sound just like Devo ought to sound. Also, dismissing them as wacky funsters with the pop songs and the energy domes is entirely in keeping with the popular understanding of the band, which underestimates just how canny they have always been.

Musically the keyboard-heavy songs most resemble the band post-Oh No, It's Devo, although the guitars get a workout occasionally (even getting duelling solos on ‘Please Baby Please'). There are more than a few sly callbacks to the back catalogue: the spoken-vocals-in-turn between Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale on‘What We Do' put one in mind of the similar cycles of ‘Smart Patrol/Mr DNA' and‘Sumthin'' recycles the skipping hi-hat pattern of ‘Whip It' (and the use-the-language-of-free-market-enterprise-to-argue-for-political-oppression trope of ‘Freedom of Choice', for that matter). It's also consistently Devoish that there are some pretty slight songs in there: ‘Mind Games' and ‘Human Rocket' are utter throwaway, as is the playful ‘Cameo' (although the nasal vocal references the eponymous 80s funk band that gave the world ‘Word Up').

Co-founders and creative axis Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald V Casale have a rare talent for writing deceptively simple lyrics that conceal a sly twist. The environmental lament ‘No Place Like Home' notes that "There's no place like home/To return to", the chorus of the aforementioned ‘Sumthin'' innocuously declares it has "something for everybody", before suggesting that a shadowy New World Order has rather direct action in mind, and the title of ‘Later is Now' is evoked after noting "sooner or later, everybody feels the bite". It's not all outward looking, though: ‘Please Baby Please' maintains the hungry sexual overtones of the band (cf: ‘Jerkin' Back & Forth', ‘Baby Doll', 'Uncontrollable Urge'). It's easy to forget, but Devo have always had humpin' on the agenda: in fact, if you examine the cover model you'll find that, though she's airbrushed to supra-human flawlessness, her open mouth has strings of saliva therein. And that's no accident.

However, the band's consistency lends itself to parody – literally. ‘Step Up' is archetypically mid-period Devo to the point where the song it most resembles is – without a word of a lie – Weird Al Yankovic's 1985 pastiche‘Dare To Be Stupid': "It's not over ‘til the cows come home/It's not over‘til the fat lady sing" is uncomfortably close to Yankovic's "Talk with your mouth full/Bite the hand that feeds you/Bite off more than you can chew". Then again, is it necessarily a bad thing? As ‘Don't Shoot (I'm A Man)' declares "Think before you answer/There is no correct answer".

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