Duty Now For The Future

Sound DNA

• Electronic
• Synth-Pop / New Wave

• angular
• sarcastic
• art school

About

The second album from New Wave mutants Devo, 1979’s <i>Duty Now for the Future</i> was recorded right after the group’s breakthrough debut, which had turned the group into unlikely stars, even landing Devo a high-profile performance on <i>Saturday Night Live</i>. As the group’s Gerald Casale later noted: “Overnight, we went from being this little club band to having to rebook our upcoming tour to larger venues.” In some ways, <i>Duty Now for the Future</i> serves as a proper sequel to 1978’s <i>Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!</i>, as it mostly consists of songs that had been part of Devo's arsenal for years, and that already been extensively road-tested. But on <i>Duty Now for the Future</i>, the group sheds much of the convulsive, punk-tinged cynicism that had been a hallmark of its first album, instead favoring a slightly more radio-ready sheen. The synthesizer had become increasingly more important to Devo sound (and would soon become more important to the New Wave scene as a whole). As a result, <i>Duty Now for the Future</i> is equal parts warm and mechanical, with synth-driven songs like “Wiggly World,” “Strange Pursuit,” and “S.I.B. (Swelling Itching Brain)” paving a way not only for Devo’s eventual Top 40 takeover, but also for the entire sound of the early 1980s. But Devo was always more than just a band—it was an audio-visual collective with a penchant for self-aware satire. And with <i>Duty Now for the Future</i>, the group presents itself as a piece of corporate product here to infect mainstream America: The cover is coated in UPC symbols, and featured a gimmicky (and expensive) punch-out postcard. The album even kicks off with a breezy instrumental inspired by the dystopian “corporate anthem” from the 1975 flick <i>Rollerball</i>. Ultimately, <i>Duty Now for the Future</i> wouldn’t turn the band into slick mainstream superstars—despite such tracks as the soaring “The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize,” or the fan-beloved cover of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man,” which sounds as though it’s being performed by a robot on a surfboard. Still, Devo’s sophomore album finds the group perfecting its <i>Future</i>-friendly sound—one that was about to give these New Wave misfits an unlikely worldwide smash.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits