Devo: New Traditionalists [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This reissue comes with a reproduction poster and a custom inner sleeve with artwork, extra credits and Devo fan club info. It's the follow-up to Freedom Of Choice and the most synth-driven Devo album to that point.

This edition

• Reproduction poster
• Custom inner sleeve
• Pressed in the USA
• Stereo mix

About the album

After Whip It made Devo pop stars, everyone wanted another one. The band, true to form, made something sharper instead. Recorded over four months at the Power Station in Manhattan between December 1980 and April 1981, New Traditionalists was their first album produced entirely by themselves, and it leans on dance rhythms and electronic percussion. Music historian Andy Zax heard a band more than slightly ambivalent about its newfound popularity, and that tension gives the record its bite.

"Through Being Cool" opens with a stomping riff and a wink at the trend-chasers who'd just discovered them, "Jerkin' Back 'N' Forth" and "Love Without Anger" pick apart relationships from the inside, and "Beautiful World" starts out sunny before quietly revealing a darker heart. Mark and Gerald do most of the writing, with Bob Mothersbaugh chipping in on the opener and the band's alter ego General Boy credited on "Enough Said."

Gerald Casale said they simply weren't built to paint the same painting twice. Forty-odd years on, the album has become exactly what its title promised: a new tradition.

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Tracklist

Listen

On Warner Bros. / Warner Records (cat# RCV1 3595), a reissue of the 1981 album.