Polysics | NEU |Asian Man | Japan

There's no way to discuss this record without talking about DEVO. That band's influence, both sonic and visual, is as plain to see in NEU as the words "Special thanks to DEVO" printed in the credits. And for better or worse, there's no way I can talk about DEVO with out taking a stroll down memory lane.

Ah, DEVO... Probably the first band I ever loved. Definitely my first concert. It was their stop at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans on the Oh, No--It's Devo tour--I was eleven years old. I bought a shiny red plastic "energy dome" (which someone subsequently sat on and crushed at a slumber party while I tuned in a spooky "numbers station" on my shortwave radio around midnight).

The concert scared the crap out of me. The first half of the show was synched to videos with imagery of S&M and other things for which my tender mind had no frame of reference. For the second half, DEVO dropped the MIDI and thrashed out "hits" from their early catalog. Guitarist Jerry Casale jumped offstage and started kicking confused New Wave fans out of their chairs yelling, "Dance you motherfuckers!"

Thus DEVO introduced me to punk rock.

Polysics knows DEVO was a punk band at its core. And while its heroes wrapped their punk sensibility in an increasingly synthetic aesthetic with each new record, Polysics is moving in the opposite trajectory, getting noisier and rawer, using drill-bit guitars to mine that hard core. In essence, NEU is Cassale's "Slap Your Mammy" without Mark Mothersbaugh's "Gut Feeling." It's a relentlessly abrasive, challenging disc that dunks your head in the noise and rarely lets you up for air.

It's also fun as hell. I don't know if it's a typo or not, but songwriter Hiroyuki Hayashi is credited with playing "guirar." Mistake or not, a truer word was never written. He's one of those players who has great technical skills yet no concern for "correct" musicality--in other words, a badass guiRAR player. While he rips manic figures on his instrument, he squeeks out emphatic non-sequitors like:

people see, and people do
cut a tooth, and miss a tooth
choose fish or choose chicken, oh
where's your manner, here you go!

These lyrics don't make much literal sense, yet they convey the Devolutionary paranoia and suspicion of consumerism, conformity and force of human habit that are even more timely today than when songs like "Freedom of Choice" were written.