Devo Album: “Total Devo”

This album marks a drastic change in Devo's previous sound. Gone are the bouncy, immature, ironic humor laced lyrics of the albums before it. They are now replaced by more mashed up love lyrics. Devo sounds like they matured on this one.

Low points: Most of the songs are just not so memorable. Most of it is bland synth-pop.

High points: Baby Doll! Very catchy and a Swedish version was featured on the movie Tapeheads. Disco Dancer is a really energetic tune, especially the included 12" remix by Ivan Ivan. Some Things Never Change is a classic song of the Devo view on the fallability of the human race.

This isn't a terrible album, but it's certainly not Devo's best. If you are looking for the more techno oriented Devo, try Smooth Noodle Maps. I recommend Are We Not Men? We are Devo!, Freedom of Choice, and New Traditionalists as better albums to start with.

A note about the album art: They are posing naked on the back cover! I hear it's a parody of a Prince album. The front cover has a poorly pasted chin on David Kendrick's face. It's like sliding down his jaw! What happened was that Bob2's shirt was covering David's chin during the photo shoot. They didn't feel like posing for the same photo again, so they did a little last-minute "plastic surgery" on Kendrick.

Some things never change.

Buy this CD for the extended version of "Disco Dancer." Pop it into your car's CD and go driving somewhere at night. Anywhere, it doesn't matter. Just play it LOUD. Tracks 8-12--yeah, do those next. Think seriously about changing your license plate to read "AGIT8ED." There is something wearily triumphant about this CD--sort of like the feeling you get when some dolt slowly gets the joke you just told, and it's on him. :-)

A gem from the post-Warner days.

Every track is tremendous and high energy - what would one expect from DEVO?

Your collection is incomplete without it.

Wish Muzik for Insomniacs was easier to find.

It's not that this is a bad album. It isn't. All of the songs on the album are pretty good. The trouble is that the whole affair is so straightforward and low key.. both lyrically and musically... that it doesn't feel like a Devo album.

There really isn't a bad song here though. Most of them feel like they belong in an 80s John Hughes movie, meaning that all they need is iconic imagery to make the emotion of the song come alive.

Maybe that's the problem with this album. Devo has always been a very visual band. Part of the fun of discovering Devo is seeing the videos and the costumes. There isn't much to visualize in this music, and the rather bland approach to most of it doesn't help.

Still. I can't knock it. My rating is - 3 stars as an album by Devo, 4 stars as an album by anyone else.

1988 found DEVO getting belated recognition as the pioneers that they are, but you wouldn't know it from "Total Devo." There are exactly two great songs here, and they are "Baby Doll" and "Disco Dancer." Both are available on "Pioneers That Got Scalped," if you must. But after that, only "Sexi-luv" gets it devo-tee right. Oddly enough, this is also the longest DEVO disc! Maybe all those years of tight compostions and short running times made them hungry for more....but in this case, more was not better.

On a positive note, this CD took the band back out on the road. The resulting tour CD, "Now It Can Be Told" is worth looking into. The studio album after this, "Smooth Noodle Maps," is superior in just about every way. "Total DEVO" might be worth a used CD investment for the curious, but there are many other, better places to start.