Freedom of Choice

Evie Nagy Freedom of Choice (2015)
This is one of a series of books, each dedicated to the discussion of a classic album - although most of them are exactly what you would expect from the term classic album - the usual Mojo magazine suspects which I've either never heard or which have otherwise left me unmoved; but happily, Devo somehow made the cut. I still find this, their third album, a bit of an odd choice for the series. For myself, their greatest album is usually the one you're listening to, possibly excepting Smooth Noodle Maps which somehow feels as though it went into a room to look for something and then forgot why it was there. Freedom of Choice always felt like a transitional set to me, lacking either the uneasy mania of Duty Now for the Future or the synthetic Spartan polish of New Traditionalists; but it's the one which sold by the truckload and which briefly transformed Devo into a household name, and of which the band themselves seem to be the fondest, so why not? If it's Devo, I'm not complaining.

Excepting Arthur C. Clarke's communication satellites, Devo may be the one example of science-fiction actually predicting something; and while de-evolution might seem an unusually pessimistic idea, perhaps even one reliant upon specific readings of societal facts, the last four years of US politics look one fuck of a lot like something from the Devo manual. This is a group to whom we probably should have been listening.

Nagy anatomically dissects each individual track of the album, taking her conclusions as starting points for biographical detail and  observation, orchestrating it all as a pleasantly unified thesis in support of just why we should have been listening to Devo, even why the world would have been a better place had we been listening to Devo - although I can't actually be sure that this isn't something I've read into the text rather than something Nagy necessarily wrote. In any case, it's a fascinating read, and one which threw up quite a few surprises; plus it reminded me why I hate the NME, which is always worth remembering.

I still don't really know how to explain Devo to those who don't get it, but this book made me feel a little bit more righteous nevertheless, so praise Jesus and pass the spud-gun.