Thoughts on Raucous Rock’n’Roll

For a long time I haven’t really been thinking of Rock’n’Roll too much. It’s true that here and there were flickers all along the other stuff. To tell the truth, a lot of my focus has been on the music of Devo.

Devo rock, sure, but they're not really rock. To me they're above the fray of genre.

I’ve decided that I really like the lyrics of their 2010 album, Something for Everybody—I was into the music for a while but the lyrics suddenly came into focus. It’s unique album that manages to fuse the sometimes patchy band’s best form with contemporary concerns and production. The album’s provenance is also highly interesting: the title stems from the band’s decision to operate like a multinational corporation and employ focus groups to choose the track list.

Devo are currently zeitgeist because of their anti-Romney song:

My Bloody Valentine: Gender Theory and Cyberpunk

I was originally writing this as part of the second instalment of the My Bloody Valentine: EPs 1988-91 review but decided it would make sense to spin it out as it is more of an artistic profile than a part of the track by track review. I decided I wanted to break away from the dynamics of gender and sex for a moment when describing My Bloody Valentine, because despite the theory often sounding reasonable it just does not seem pertinent half the time. This came up in conversation yesterday when I was watching footage of one of Primal Scream's Screamadelica gigs. For all the rock'n'roll clichés, gender seemed the last thing worth discussing. Certainly not from the standpoint of diagnosing patriarchal societies or something like that. Reading this blog post about Oneohtrix Point Never inspired me a little. More after the jump.