Consumer Guide Album

Devo: New Traditionalists [Warner Bros., 1981]
Filler plus three major songs, each of which gets an explanatory video in concert, which with these art-school ciphers is a comfort. In "Through Being Cool," a sexually and racially integrated platoon of "young alien types" do in fact "eliminate the ninnies and the twits," though rather than the bone-crunching tactics the lyric prescribes they utilize a ray gun that reduces two discoids to a Clyfford Still blur, transforms three joggers into old people, and blows two old people away. In "Love Without Anger" two humans in chicken suits bill and coo after fighting over pecking order. And in "Beautiful World" the mild closing disclaimer "But not for me" is amplified by a panoply of newsreel horrors. None of which will satisfy the ninnies and twits who think war toys and visual aids are evil by definition. B