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NME on ATP, Butlins Minehead Gig

Devo earlier were uber tight for a well-choreographed, immaculately-lit run through the hits that was almost depressing in its professionalism. A nagging part of me (having seen them already last year) couldn't shake the Vegas routine side of it. As they stripped off the suits, threw out the bouncy balls and dressed in big baby outifts your mind can't help but wander to the time period between when they first set out to change, or at least subvert, or at least devolve the world. Since their inception in '73 we've seen two Bush administrations, numerous wars yada yada yada and they're still a bunch of overweight fifty-somethings in red flowerpot hats. Nevertheless, it was still fucking Devo live.

MUSICOMH.com reviews LONDON GIG

One for the true fans, this. Not the greatest hits set that you might expect from a recently re-formed Devo; but their debut album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, played in order, in its entirety, for the first time ever.

Before the music kicks off, we're taken even further back in history, as video screens play out selected sequences from their 1974 home movie The Truth About De-Evolution. This, lest we forget, features men dressed as apes spanking chubby babies with table tennis bats and a medical lecture with reanimated cadavers writhing around on the desks in plastic bags. The message is clear: tonight Devo will be as bizarrely entertaining as they were 30 years ago.

And anything less would evidently be a disappointment to the audience, evenly split between nerdy young things who have recently - and commendably - discovered the new wave pioneers and nervous, thin middle-aged men wearing flowerpot hats and shuffling about impatiently during the support act.

Devo, now close to pensionable age but no less silly than ever they were, take to the stage in their trademark yellow boiler suits and blast into Uncontrollable Urge. Mark Mothersbaugh, part David Lynch and part Benny Hill, charges around the stage like a loon, tearing the arms off his bandmates' costumes; an appropriate mirroring of the jerky lunacy of the track. And yet, as the gig goes on, the songs become heavier, louder, faster and darker than anyone in the audience would have remembered them: tinny art-pop re-invented as heavy, pounding rock.

Praying Hands, poised and clinical like early Talking Heads on record, becomes far more aggressive here, not least when Mark Mothersbaugh interrupts the track by piling into the crowd like a man a third of his age and half his size to bellow at members of the audience: "Sir, what is your RIGHT hand doing? Sir, what is your LEFT hand doing?" For Mongoloid, he belts off the stage and reappears with oversized pom-poms, and capers around like a portly, out-of-breath cheerleader.

Slightly frightening, and quite marvellous.

It's Jocko Homo, one of the oddest pop songs ever written, that gets the biggest cheers of the evening. And therein lies the most puzzling and marvellous contradiction of Devo: the stranger and more inaccessible they are, the more they are loved. Of course it's quite impossible to dance to a tune written in 7/8 time, so the audience do the next best thing: stand stock-still, raise their arms, and yell along to the deranged "Are we not men? / We are Devo!" catechism with ear-to-ear smiles.

The more song-based, '50s-inflected second half of the album is played straight; showing that one of the most eccentric bands in the world also have the ability to loosen up and rock out with the best of them, placing them closer to their British punk peers than to the twitchy, uptight American '70s new wave. Gut Feeling and Come Back Jonee acknowledge their debt to early, primal rock and roll; played more brutally here than on record, and are all the better for it.

But don't be fooled: Devo are still a thinking man's band with a manifesto to match. And so, Jerry Casale takes a break in the proceedings to remind us of the principles of De-evolution. They maintained in the late '70s that modern, capitalist, herd-driven man was actually devolving rather than evolving.Thirty years later, asks Jerry, and has mankind actually devolved? A deafening "Yes!" from the audience leaves us in no doubt that it has.

But as for Devo, they're just as great as they ever were.

INDEPENDENT on SUNDAY NEWSPAPER reviews LONDON GIG

Mention the word Devo and the epithet "post-punk" will never be far behind, but in truth the Akron art rockers' origins were pre-punk, having formed in the aftermath of the massacre of anti-war protesters at America's Kent State University in 1970.

As founder Jerry Casale has explained to Simon Reynolds, "After Kent, it seemed like you could either join a guerrilla group like the Weather Underground, actually try assassinating some of these evil people ... or you could just make some kind of whacked-out creative Dada art response. Which is what Devo did."

A product of their time, and also of their place: one of the first bands to self-identify as "industrial", their jerky rhythms mimetic of the Ohio rubber capital's factories. The specific desire was to make "outer space caveman music" (Casale), the theory being that "the more technology you have, the more primitive you can be" (Mark Mothersbaugh).

For a long time, Devo disappeared from the discourse entirely. Suddenly, though, every "angular" post-punk revivalist act was ripping off Devo's chops, and their 1979 debut album Are We Not Men? (We Are Devo), performed in its entirety tonight, sounds easily contemporary enough to be a current release. Admittedly, Virgin would never sanction a song like "Mongoloid" today. For that track, Mothersbaugh – looking like a mad professor played by a middle-aged Rick Moranis – incongruously jiggles pom-poms.

For old men, and for art pranksters, Devo rock harder and louder than you'd ever expect. The name carries a double meaning: slang for "deviant", and short for "de-evolution", which crops up in the one bit of banter. Casale asks whether the intervening 30 years have shown that de-evolution is occurring. The response is universal assent.

THE TIMES NEWSPAPER reviews LONDON GIG

Unusual headgear was spotted all over North London on Wednesday as thousands of fans flocked to witness an unusual world premiere performance by the cult New Wave band Devo. Hundreds sported copies of the Akron, Ohio, quintet’s trademark “energy dome” helmet, a kind of inverted flowerpot. Ironically, these recently re-formed post-punk veterans chose to perform bare-headed, although they bowed to tradition by wearing another of their signature uniforms, fluorescent yellow overalls.

This show marked the first full performance of the band’s 1978 debut album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, a mere 31 years after it was recorded. Introduced by a short film dating from the late 1970s, the concert was a short but lively affair, more punk cabaret revue than reverential nostalgia show. It fell under the banner of the excellent Don’t Look Back concert series, organised by the same promoters as the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Minehead, where Devo are scheduled to play a more conventional set tonight.

Devo formed almost 40 years ago at Kent State University, the Ohio college campus notorious for the 1970 shooting of four student anti-war protesters by National Guardsmen. Initially more of a conceptual art project than a band, their groundbreaking use of jerky robo-pop rhythms, primitive electronics and kitsch sci-fi imagery attracted early celebrity fans such as Brian Eno, David Bowie and Neil Young.

Much of the album still sounded spiky and subversive, especially the stand-out anthems Mongoloid and Jocko Homo, both of which triggered mass hysteria at the Forum. Lead vocals were shared between principal songwriters Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, who were backed by their brothers, both called Bob. However, the show was slightly marred by a muddy sound and bludgeoning, guitar-heavy arrangements.

Devo have been mostly dormant since releasing their last album of new material in 1990. They enjoyed a short-lived comeback at the Lollapalooza festival in 1996 and 1997, but since then the band members have concentrated on their day jobs: Casale as a video director and Mothersbaugh a soundtrack composer.

Dating from 2005, this latest reunion is more serious and sustained. The band’s first new album in almost two decades, Fresh, is scheduled for release this year. After this highly enjoyable but slightly sloppy show, we can only hope Devo still possess sufficient creative ambition to move beyond boorish punk cabaret and reclaim their early, edgy, pioneering spirit.

All Tomorrow’s Parties, Minehead, until May 10. Box office: 0870 2643333