There are a few bad omens hovering around Something For Everybody. It's been two decades since Devo last attempted a full album of new music-- and 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps wasn't memorable. Then there's the fact that the band seems more interested in their marketing campaign than the music-- a scary enough preference to begin with, but even worse considering said campaign is basically simple crowd-sourcing presented as some kind of conceptual art.
Given those red flags, it's hard not to enter Something For Everybody with expectations set on low, and there are some easy targets right away. The first few songs verge on self-parody-- opener "Fresh" is based around what sounds like the Devo preset on a 1989 Casio, while "Please Baby Please" offers an annoyingly bouncy cadence recalling the worst of Was (Not Was). Lowest on the ladder is "What We Do", filled with labored yelps and buzzword rhymes that come off less like ironic commentary than lazy verbal clip-art: "Gamin', Prayin', Believin', Maintainin', Textin', Electin', Rejectin', Infectin'."
Endure those initial hurdles, though, and the rest of Something For Everybody contains some pretty good music-- the kind that actually sneaks up on you a little rather than ham-fisting you over the head. The switch comes in track five, "Mind Games", which melts video-game synths into classic Devo riff pinball. From there, the melodies get sharper and more skewed, the beats and synths more diverse and rangy-- evoking everyone from LCD Soundsystem to Mouse on Mars. And most of it is good enough to remind you how most of that "everyone" owes something to Devo.
Note that we're talking good music here, not words. The lyrics improve compared to the albums' first three clunkers, but they're still rife with clichés ("It's not over 'till the cows come home/ It's not over 'till the fat lady sings"), dated politics ("I keep tryin' to turn it all around/ But the New World Order wants to take me down") and self-conscious Devo-isms ("I am a human rocket/ On a mission of deployment.") Yet when the band is locked in sonically, those lines sound better than they read. Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale can still bite off words with nervy smarts, like the art-punk/tech-nerds they will forever be.
Something For Everybody probably stands closest to 1982's Oh No, It's Devo! in their oeuvre. That record got mixed reviews, and this one probably will too, but I think Oh No is unfairly maligned. It may have been weaker than the band's classics, but its best moments combined art with pop in a way that could sound as good in a gallery as on an episode of a sitcom*.* There's no similar zeitgest that Devo fits into nowadays, despite their blatant attempts to court "everybody." But in the considerable sub-strata made of people who still care about this band, Something For Everybody holds some truth in its name.
