Remember Devo of Whip It fame?
Well, the '70s New Wave band will release their first studio album in 20 years, tentatively titled Fresh, in 2010 and launch a new tour starting with a date at Coachella Music Festival in April.
"We started writing music a couple years ago," said singer Mark Mothersbaugh, 52, down the line from New York City leading up to a two-night stand at the Phoenix in Toronto tonight.
"Record companies now are trying to figure out what they are and why they are and that to us is kind of where we wanted to be 35 years ago. We wanted to be in a place like this. And so we got excited about it and we started writing songs and now we're almost at the end of the process."
Mothersbaugh, who has enjoyed a healthy post-Devo career as a prolific TV and film score and soundtrack composer and producer (Pee-wee's Playhouse, Rugrats, Wes Anderson's films, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), said Fresh remixers include John Hill (Shakira, Jay-Z), Greg Kurstin (Kris Allen) and British artist Santigold.
"We're actually telling people, 'Go ahead and do what you want to do. Let us see what you think Devo is.' Because that's what we did with The Rollling Stones, ten years after they wrote the song Satisfaction, we did our re-interpretation in the early '70s. We're welcoming the idea of younger people showing us what they liked about Devo and what they like about the songs we're doing. It's kind of fun."
There is also a documentary about the band in the works and Mothersbaugh said the filmmakers knew the group before they even formed Devo.
The band sprang out of Kent State Art School in the late '60s, early '70s, following the shootings of four students by the National Guard during a protest, with a discordant pop sound that was as distinctive as their quirky, sci-fi look and "de-evolution" philosophy.
While teenagers may have incorrectly dismissed them as a novelty act, they were embraced by Neil Young, who asked them to partcipate in his 1977 film Human Highway, and Iggy Pop and David Bowie, who was originally going to produce their first album in 1978. That distinction instead went to Brian Eno.
"I think we were atypical," said Mothersbaugh. "We weren't really New Wave and we weren't really punk and we weren't really rock and roll or dance music per se. We had a different kind of energy and our band was created out of trying to find a way to describe what we saw going on in the world around us back when we were young guys in Akron, Ohio., in our early '20s. And now, unfortunately, the world really is devolved. Now it's kind of ironic because nobody argues about that anymore."
In the meantime, Devo are currently touring North America performing their two seminal albums -- 1978's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!, and 1980's Freedom Of Choice, which spawned Whip It -- in their entirety, with two-night stands in just seven cities.
Both albums have also been recently remastered and reissued by their label, who just resigned the band for the release of Fresh.
The tour idea came from a May performance in London. Devo recreated their 1978 debut in its entirety, and it went so well the band decided to take the idea on the road.
"There's something appealing about it that comes from having a relationship with an album," said Mothersbaugh. "'Cause now after doing it and it being really enjoyable to do, I could think of a dozen albums that I'd love to hear an artist play in consecutive order. So this is it. We'll never do this again, I'm sure of it."
