Devo - Art Devo (2024)

Between Hardcore, Recombo DNA, Pioneers Who Got Scalped and the rest, it's difficult to believe there was still any unheard primal Devo left at the bottom of that much scraped barrel, and I'd begun to get the feeling of someone in an energy dome squeezing my monetary udders with just a bit more relish than seemed polite; so it was lucky I bothered to look at the track list of this one. Not only is Art Devo yet more previously unheard material from the celebrated fountain of filth, but it isn't even more of the same, this time focussing on raw demos and recordings which somehow make the Hardcore tracks sound like the studio work; and yet again, near half of these are entirely new to me. I don't have the time to sit down and tally up how many tracks appear on which studio albums, but I'm fairly certain we've now reached the point where the previously unheard outnumbers the officially released.

The emphasis steers more towards the twangy mutant blues of Devo's early seventies incarnation than the homemade synth era, although it's still pretty fucking weird for the most part - and either well recorded or beautifully restored. Some of it sounds like ZZ Top after an accident at the power plant, while other tracks were patently performed at some poetry event, cheekily augmented with guitar, effects, and that drum kit they made by attaching guitar pickups to household objects. Thematically, they were squelchier than ever back when this material was recorded - massively uncomfortable listening, gleeful perversion as consumer ritual disappearing backwards - both literally and figuratively - up its own ass with a big grin and a creepy thumbs up. Looking out the window in 2024, it's terrifying how far ahead of their time they were, and amazing how many hitherto unrevealed revelations are to be found in this huboon stomp each time we return. Given Devo's stated mission to travel their own career path in reverse, this must surely be their first and hence last album, but I wouldn't put money on it.