Excellent DEVO article in today's Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/30/devo-art-punk-80s-revival

New wave oddballs Devo used to warn that consumerism was crumbling. Now they're back to say we told you so. Pat Long tips his funny hat

• Pat Long
• The Guardian, Saturday 2 May 2009
• Article history

Of the items on the list of Things That Were Big In The 1980s – apartheid, the very real threat of impending nuclear annihilation, Spandau Ballet – few are really worthy of revival in 2009. One bold exception is Devo, the oddball art-punk nerds distinguished by a too-clever-for-their-own-good sense of humour and herky-jerky songs about sex, mutation and conformity, who briefly held a shattered mirror up to mainstream pop music's inherent oddness. "Of all the bands who came from the underground and made it in the mainstream," declared Kurt Cobain, "Devo were the most challenging and subversive of all."

Formed in the industrial midwestern town of Akron, Ohio – disputed birthplace of the hamburger, undisputed birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous – in 1973, Devo combined a retrofuturist sci-fi aesthetic with radical reworkings of radio rock staples and hefty portions of social satire and surrealism. Best remembered now for their outlandish matching outfits, the most famous of which – yellow radiation suits with flower pot-shaped red plastic "energy dome" hats – has recently become a bestselling Halloween outfit, Devo pioneered synthesisers, the music video and multimedia concert technology, before an inglorious decline and rebirth producing TV and film music. (Singer Mark Mothersbaugh has a regular segment on kids' TV show Yo Gabba Gabba!, wrote the soundtrack to Rugrats and has scored movies for Wes Anderson, and Gerard Casale has directed videos for Foo Fighters and Soundgarden.)

Now the band who started out as a student in-joke find themselves touring long after their less sharp contemporaries have called it a day, sustained by the admiration of a whole new generation of 80s-obsessed outsiders. As 60-year-old bassist, synth player and group founder Casale explains backstage at the band's appearance at this year's South By SouthWest festival: "There are a number of bands who I hear aspects of ourselves in. I love MSTRKRFT, Santigold and the Kills – not the Killers – and these bands all say nice things about how Devo inspired them."

This week Devo return to the UK to play their first album, 1978's Brian Eno-produced Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! in its entirety from start to finish as part of the Don't Look Back series of gigs. This entire concept is lent a suitably ironic twist with the fact that the band's name is an abbreviation of De-Evolution, the idea that the constrictive nature of consumerist society is driving mankind to regress at a rate of knots. "This concert is a relic of a time back when artists really thought about their albums," chuckles Casale. "A time when there was no iPod shuffle functionality and people did not have ADD."

Casale and Mothersbaugh were both students at Kent State University at the time of the killing of four students by National Guardsmen – which inspired future Devo collaborator Neil Young to write CSNY's classic protest song Ohio – and there's always been a very real sense of anger and cynicism at the state of the world underlying the band's visual japery. Last year they played their first show in Akron since the late-70s as a fundraiser for Barack Obama, complete with $20 "Devo-bama" T-shirts. Today, though, Casale is less hopeful about Obama's US.

"Bascially they handed Barack a big bag of poo and said, 'See what you can do with this' after the systematic and wholesale rape and pillage of the country. But it's bigger than Barack; he's part of the New World Order anyway, otherwise he'd have been assassinated by now. What we're seeing at the moment is an end to the viability of global capitalism. As a species we just haven't done enough to stop the decline of the human race – and how we're all going down together. So now Devo is the friendly house band on the Titanic."

Despite this – and although Devo have been touring annually since their triumphant reunion headline slot at the 1997 Lollapalooza festival – this year they're returning with new material. Their first album in almost two decades is written and Casale claims to have production interest from Justice, Fatboy Slim, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. "I'd love to give a song to Andre 3000 and see what his vision would be like," he says. Their bulging contacts book is only part of the reason why Casale believes that Devo are easily able to hold their own on their return to the brave new musical landscape of donk, Spotify and the Head, Shoulders Knees N'Toes dance.

"When we started out we released a self-pressed single through independent record stores," says Gerald, "and used our live shows to spread the word about the band. Before we even got signed we'd already successfully distributed and marketed ourselves. That was considered weird at the time – like we weren't really rock'n'roll because we didn't follow the usual cliche of the wasted musician who is basically an attention-seeking fucked-up child. Now all bands are having to do what we did. At least they used to give you big advances back then. Now unless you're Beyoncé or Fiddy labels can't do much for you. The music business has imploded and the old models are gone and there's no new paradigm to replace the old one. There are no rules."

Befitting a group with such an egghead reputation, Devo themselves are actively searching for a new paradigm. Some – such as when they teamed with Disney to release an album of family-friendly rerecordings of their original hits with child actors singing the lyrics (titled Devo 2.0) – have been less successful than others. Though a high-profile court case with McDonald's followed the release and subsequent speedy withdrawal of a Happy Meal toy named New Wave Nigel wearing one of Devo's (trademarked) energy domes, Casale claims to be in negotiations with American supermarket giants Target for exclusive rights to a new Devo toy that could be the only way for hardcore fans – called Spuds for no discernible reason – to hear the band's new music.

"We're also looking at doing hologram concerts," says Casale. "Thirty years ago we were the first band to use film projections synched up with a click track so that we could interact with the imagery projected on the screen. Critics at the time hated it. They said, 'This isn't rock'n'roll, this looks like a videogame.' Then of course U2 did it, the Flaming Lips did it. But we were known for our sense of innovation."

Indeed, with the world in an epic mess, there's no better time for Devo to lead us back to the future.

• Devo play HMV Forum, NW5, Wed 6 May and ATP, Minehead, on Fri 8 May.