Something for Everybody

Though they spent the late '70s and early '80s pioneering new wave and synth pop, Devo overstayed their welcome by several years and three or four albums. 2010 reunion/comeback album Something For Everybody offers that rarest of opportunities, a chance to fix the past. It allows us to imagine what would have happened if the band stayed on the right path after their last great album, 1981’s New Traditionalists, instead of descending into neutered, tuneless digipop. Does it approach the lofty level of early Devo? Of course not, but it’s a hell of a lot better than anything that came later. For one thing, the Akronites seem to have remembered that they started out as a rock band, and there are plenty of sharp, angular guitar riffs and propulsive, non-mechanical drumbeats to prove it. They’ve recovered their knack for killer hooks as well, and the likes of “Fresh” and “Please Baby Please” are overflowing with them. Their lyrical bite is back too, with lyrics that slip a significant dose of satirical social commentary among the overt pop songs. The lone loser, “No Place Like Home,” a botched attempt at poignancy that comes off like an Oingo Boingo reject, serves as a valuable reminder of the ways this endeavor could have easily gone astray.