Новые Традиционалисты: Альбом Devo 1981 года

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".

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".

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. 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".

New Traditionalists was the band's first fully self produced album. which was remixed by Teddybears.

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. The first pressings of the LP included a 33 inch by 22 inch poster, designed by the Church of the SubGenius. It contains a drawing of the band on stage, with some iconic American archetypes (a Native American, a Pilgrim, a cowboy, a hippie, a punk rocker and a modern housewife) in the audience.

Devo made three music videos for the album. "Through Being Cool" had Devo taking a limited role, focusing on a team of kids clad in Devo "Action Vests" attacking arrogant and ignorant people with "spudguns". In "Love Without Anger", Devo acts as a Greek chorus to a bizarre love story between two humanoid chickens. It also features a stop motion video by Rev. Ivan Stang (Church of the SubGenius) of Barbie and Ken fighting each other and removing each other's body parts. A portrait of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs is on the wall above the couch. The music video for the song "Beautiful World" features the character Booji Boy prominently, as he initially watches scenes of beautiful women, futuristic cars and other happy elements, which by the end of the song have been replaced by images of race riots, the Ku Klux Klan, World War I, famine in Africa, car crashes and nuclear explosions, which puts a much darker slant on the song's lyrics. The video was slightly censored for broadcasts on the ABC TV music show Countdown. A small segment of archive footage depicting a woman on fire was considered unsuitable for the show's early evening time slot—despite the fact that the flames were animated, not real—and this censored version is still screened occasionally on the ABC's music video series rage, including a mid 1990s episode hosted by Devo.

New Traditionalists was originally packaged with a bonus 7 inch single of the band's cover of songwriter Allen Toussaint's "Working in the Coal Mine". Most CD and cassette pressings of New Traditionalists include "Working in the Coal Mine" as a bonus track.

David Fricke of Rolling Stone stated, "New Traditionalists has a few obvious Top Forty finger poppers – 'Through Being Cool' (the latest Devo fight song), 'Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth' and 'Enough Said' (this year's 'Whip It') – and the slick production makes it all go down easy. But the group's increasing overuse of simplistic, droning synthesizer riffs and treadmill dance rhythms is neither trendy nor traditional. It's predictable." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Steve Huey opined that New Traditionalists found Devo "aghast at being pegged as a novelty act by some of their own satirical targets", and that the band "largely abandons its sense of absurdity" on the album, theorizing that they'd decided that "America's comprehension of irony was sorely lacking". While he felt the album contained "some of Devo's angriest, most embittered songs", he felt many were "unmemorable" and sported "melodic deficiencies", although he ultimately concluded that "at least half of the album is worthwhile." The album and its singles continued Devo's success in Australia, with "Beautiful World" peaking at No. 14 and "Working in the Coal Mine" at No. 20.

The tour set was designed by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, and was manufactured by John Zabrucky. Modified treadmills were housed inside a temple stage set, allowing for uniform choreography by the band members, and still photos were projected behind the band. The set was plexiglass, allowing it to be illuminated by different colored lights, and the front, made of white plastic, was removable, revealing a framework. On stage, Devo wore what were called "Utopian Boy Scout Uniforms", consisting of a gray button down shirt, gray slacks and black patent leather shoes. Professional footage was shot during the tour, but after the film crew's lighting generator clashed with the stage crew's and blew both sets of lights, an insurance claim stipulated that the footage had to be destroyed. In 2012, Devo commemorated the New Traditionalists tour by releasing Live 1981 Seattle as a double LP for Record Store Day. The album was culled from a cassette recording from November 1981. According to Gerald Casale, "DEVO archivist Michael Pilmer (aka Devo Obsesso), found the tape in a shoebox full of cassettes in [keyboardist and guitarist] Bob 2's home fifteen years ago, which he immediately transferred to DAT". In 2013, it was issued on CD with two bonus tracks from a performance at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts on November 5, 1981.