At their finest, Devo appeared like aliens translating cultural clichés again to an unexpecting viewers. Witnessing Devo on Saturday Night time Reside in 1978 or occurring upon the video for “Whip It” through the early days of MTV solely strengthened how not like the group appeared from every part that surrounded them. Their regimented concert events put the mislead punk’s allegedly anarchic spontaneity; the cookie-cutter conformity of their uniforms—particularly after they launched their matching “power dome” hats in 1980—appeared unnerving. And Casale’s Booji Boy masks might be genuinely unsettling.

Though it’s replete with interval pictures and memorabilia, 50 Years of De-Evolution doesn’t fairly seize the thrilling sense of otherness Devo conveyed at their peak. Heard inside the vacuum of their very own catalog, Devo appear extra eccentric than revolutionary. That is very true of the more and more computerized music they made after 1980’s Freedom of Selection, the album Mark Mothersbaugh retrospectively referred to as “the top of Devo.” The band carried on for a few years after that, but their inventive processes shifted. As an alternative of workshopping materials in group rehearsals, Mothersbaugh constructed songs on his synthesizers. The stiff, clipped drum machines and plasticky keyboards—crystallized on the clanging din of “Shout,” the title observe to a 1984 album overwhelmed into submission by a Fairlight synthesizer—have been in a way a logical development from Devo’s mechanical rock’n’roll, but the airless preparations made it appear as if the band have been succumbing to the very issues they as soon as satirized. Devo sounded most alien, satirically, once they have been clearly simply people trying to play like robots.

But 50 Years of De-Evolution goes a great distance towards disguising Devo’s self-acknowledged drop-off within the mid-Nineteen Eighties by successfully providing two paired compilations that retell the band’s story in fast succession. Every CD (or 2xLP pair) begins in the beginning, then follows the group’s rise and fall. The primary disc runs by the massive hits, then concludes with their 2010 comeback. The second disc begins over with ostensible rarities from the early years—not precisely hits, however nonetheless canon—after which retells the story, ending as soon as once more with their Twenty first-century return. (The gambit will be complicated: The unique indie variations of “Mongoloid” and “Jocko Homo” are tucked away on the second disc, whereas the major-label remakes open the primary disc.) It feels just like the compilers bought midway by the comp earlier than deciding it wanted a dose of the demented power of “I’m a Potato,” “Be Stiff,” and “Uncontrollable Urge.”

By re-tracing its steps, 50 Years of De-Evolution winds up shifting focus to Devo’s true energy: Beneath the futurism, they have been a tricky, lean rock’n’roll band. The primary three data are underpinned by the heavy backbeat of Alan Myers, a “human metronome,” as Casale referred to as him, who however retained a way of funk. Devo didn’t fairly disguise this debt to R&B: They employed Robert Margouleff, an engineer and synthesizer pioneer who made his repute by his Nineteen Seventies work with Stevie Surprise, to assist document Freedom of Selection. R&B’s affect is quickly obvious all through the anthology, in each their early songs and materials from the 2010 reunion document One thing for All people, which featured Josh Freese on drums.

Freese might not possess Myers’ subversive swing, however he offers Devo a obligatory pulse that contrasts markedly with the mannered music Devo made within the waning days of the ’80s. That’s the true revelation of 50 Years of De-Evolution: These Midwestern artwork rockers might have portended the long run, however of their hearts, they pledged allegiance to the identical working-class rhythms that fueled Twentieth-century rock’n’roll.

Devo: 50 Years of De-Evolution 1973–2023