New Traditionalists is the fourth studio album by the American new wave band Devo, released in 1981 by Warner Bros. Records. The album was recorded over a period of four months between December 1980 and April 1981 at the Power Station in Manhattan, New York City. It features the minor hits "Through Being Cool" and "Beautiful World".
Background
Devo devised the album's title while touring their Freedom of Choice album in Japan. The group had met two businessmen in a sushi bar who were wearing pins that read "New Traditionalists". Mark Mothersbaugh recalled that the band were inspired by the phrase, as they wanted to create new traditions themselves. The phrase belonged to a right-wing political group in Japan, who were using it as their name, and Devo found the pins in stores and purchased them as a joke. When the album was being written, the group recalled the name and decided that it would work for their songs. In the words of Gerald Casale, "We became the New Traditionalists but turned it on its ear. We appropriated the idea of that, meaning we were going to provide you with new traditions to forget about the old ones".
Composition
Following the band's success with "Whip It" and its parent album, Freedom of Choice, Devo opted to craft a darker and less accessible album that explored their concept of "de-evolution" even further. New Traditionalists contains songs in a minimalist synth-pop style, with an emphasis on synthesizer riffs and dance rhythms, as well as an increased focus on electronic percussion. Lyrically, the album contains more straightforward sentiments than the band's previous albums, often eschewing sarcasm and irony for overt anger. Rolling Stone Australia notes that the song "Beautiful World" "waits a while to reveal its hidden darkness and cynicism", echoed in its music video, which starts out "happy" and "optimistic". In "Enough Said", Devo make one of their first overtly political statements, advocating throwing leaders into a ring and letting them "fight like hell to see who's king". The lyrics were written by Mark and Bob's father Robert Mothersbaugh, Sr., who also played their character General Boy.
According to music historian Andy Zax, New Traditionalists found Devo "more than slightly ambivalent about their newfound popularity", exemplified in opening track "Through Being Cool", with its criticism of trendy "ninnies" and "twits". Zax also observed that songs such as "Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth" and "Love Without Anger" "dissect dysfunctional relationships from the inside, rather than from afar".
In a 2020 interview, Gerald Casale stated that he felt New Traditionalists "was the last [Devo] record where there was some semblance of balance between primal energy and just electronics for their own sake."
Production
New Traditionalists was the band's first fully self-produced album. It was recorded on a then-new brand of 2-inch tape from 3M. Unfortunately, when Devo began recording the vocals for the album, the edges of the tape had begun to disintegrate. After asking Warner Bros. if they could start over and re-record the album from scratch and being denied, Devo transferred all the work they had done to digital reel-to-reel tape and finished the album via digital recording at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, California.
"The Super Thing" was later sampled in Devo's 2007 single "Watch Us Work It", which was remixed by Teddybears.
Artwork
The front and back cover were photographed by Moshe Brakha and feature artwork by Richard Seireeni, based on a concept by the band. The band's clothing, also worn during live performances, was influenced by Japanese fashion, while the rubber pompadours, created by Brent Scrivner, were based on the hairstyle of John F. Kennedy but were frequently mistaken for that of Ronald Reagan. Casale's longheld interest in the space program led to the band using a cartoon image of an astronaut's head from a paper Halloween mask in the artwork, which was later reused for the limited edition "Beautiful World" picture disc.
The band wore blue V-neck T-shirts with the New Traditionalists astronaut on the black sleeves. This shirt can be seen on the US, Australian and New Zealand versions of the album cover. On the European cover, Devo is seen wearing "Sleeveless Maxi-Turtleneck Sweaters". The T-shirts, turtlenecks and plastic versions of the pompadours were all available through Devo's fan club catalog.