Meet the Stevos!

welcome to a 1981 that never was

     

Okay. "Meet the Stevos" is not "English Settlement" by XTC, or Wall of Voodoo's "Call of the West," or "Argybargy" by Squeeze, or Devo's "Freedom of Choice," or the eponymous debut "The Cars." But one trait Meet the Stevos shares with those albums is that there isn't a bad song on it.

Listening to "Meet the Stevos," you will find yourself transported to an alternate 1981. It sounds like a new-wave-era pop album by a band that was somehow overlooked at the time and has only now come to light. I don't know if "Meet the Stevos" would have generated big radio hits like those other albums, but it does have a full set of finely-crafted pop songs (not to mention tight musicianship and production).

Listen to the samples of "On the Alert," "Headphones," "Special Relativity," and "Atom Clock." The iTunes Store's 30-second samples aren't always a reliable slice of a song, but those four are captured reasonably well. If you like them, buy "Meet the Stevos." You'll like the rest of it. You may need to give it a couple of listens for it to grow on you – personally, it took me a while to get used to the fact that I didn't know these songs already. Some frustrated little part in the back of my brain kept trying to recall them from 1981.