Devo
Duty Now For the Future

It’s fitting that Warner Bros. is rereleasing Devo’s 1979 sophomore album, Duty Now for the Future, early into the ‘10s, a decade that already seems heavily indebted to the New Wave scene. The music seems appropriate today, with quirky electronic music flourishes popping up as regularly as pretentious indie rock. While never as commercially successful as some of their contemporaries, Akron’s Devo has quietly maintained a strong cult following despite releasing only a handful of albums since the ‘80s. Duty Now, often overlooked among the band’s first three albums, finds Devo incorporating more keyboards on tracks like “Triumph of the Will” and “Red Eye” while still relying heavily on the buzzing post-punk guitar sound used by contemporaries like Joy Division. The album was a giant stepping stone for the band that went on to release the watermark album of its career, Freedom of Choice (which included the band’s only true hit single “Whip It”), just a year later. It’s invigorating to listen to Duty Now for the Future thirty years later and hear the innovations Devo was making; giant leaps forward in music that is the genesis of New Wave. -Tim Webb

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