Don't call it a comeback. The members of Devo see their current reincarnation as a sign that the rest of the music industry - and maybe even all of mankind - finally is coming around to their futuristic way of thinking.
"We think now might be Devo's time, or so we're hoping," said Mark Mothersbaugh, primary singer and co-leader of the Ohio art-rock band.
Hardly a boastful statement, Mothersbaugh made this comment while talking about the broken state of the record business and the idea that human evolution has gone in reverse ("de-evolution"), two cornerstone themes of the group's quirky plastic-topped 1977-82 heyday. The Whip It hitmakers have issued their first album in 20 years.
Talking by phone from his West Hollywood, California, studio - where he has scored Wes Anderson movies and many TV clips in recent years - Mothersbaugh said he hasn't missed life in a rock band.
"Our last label, Enigma Records, was like a crashing airliner, where the owners of the company were looting it before it hit the ground," he said. "After that, I thought, 'Shame on me if I do it again'."
However, Mothersbaugh said he and his bandmates - including co-leader Gerald Casale and their respective brothers (both named Bob) - saw opportunity amid the rubble.
"The implosion of the record industry was a big factor. We grappled with the industry the first time around, but now it gave us this glimmer of hope that we could do something new and interesting instead of being pontificated to by people that controlled the faucet."
"Interesting" in Devo terms, is always a loaded word. The band's new album, Something for Everyone, was accompanied by an ingenious and madcap marketing campaign.
The band convinced Warner Bros (Devo's former and current label) to hire an outside advertising firm to help roll out the album. "And that's when we thought we could have fun," the singer said.
The ad firm, Mother (which also works for Target), adopted an ultra-corporate approach that was so over-the-top, it suited the band's ironic flavour.
Among the tactics was a "Song Study," in which focus groups and online polls picked the final list of 12 tracks on Something for Everyone. There was also a hilarious "Colour Study" that's still online (colorstudy.clubdevo.com/).
More serious marketing work included streaming the album at The Colbert Report website and lining up a gig at the Winter Olympics.
"These are things that make us laugh," Mothersbaugh explained. "But ... 500 albums came out the week our album came out. How does somebody get noticed in all that?"
In the 20 years since its last album, Devo actually has become more mainstream, thanks to the widespread use of its music in TV commercials. Whip It alone as been adapted to shill for Taco Bell, Twix, Pringles and Swiffer sweepers ("Swiff it!").
While clearly an easy way to make money off the band's catalogue, Mothersbaugh said the commercials tied into the de-evolutionary philosophy that has defined Devo since its inception in the aftermath of the 1970 shootings at Kent State University, where the band was formed.
"After the shootings, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't through rebellion or anarchy that you were going to change the world, but rather through subversion," he said.
"And who is more subversive than Madison Avenue? No-one. They can make you buy all sorts of crap that you shouldn't buy, and they can make you do and think things you shouldn't do and think. We all started paying attention to Madison Ave. right then and there, and wanted to employ their techniques."
Something for Everyone manages to sound both modern and like classic Devo. Songs such as the opener, Fresh, and Don't Shoot (I'm a Man) - all focus-group approved tracks, mind you - fit in alongside LCD Soundsystem or other hot bands with jittery hyper beats, whirring synthesizers and robotic vocals.
Mothersbaugh thinks Devo's timeliness goes far deeper than the music, though.
"Things have devolved in this world so rapidly over the last 20 years," he said, pointing to Mike Judge's 2006 cult movie about our dumbed-down future, Idiocracy, as an update of Devo's original thesis on human de-evolution.
"We're kind of living it. Now instead of people saying angrily, `What do you mean, we're devolving?! What do you mean we're going backwards?!', people get it now. I think it's a good time for Devo to reiterate that we must choose our mutations carefully."
