Shout

Shout is the sixth studio album by American new wave band Devo, released on October 8, 1984 by Warner Bros. Records. Arriving two years after their previous studio album, Oh, No! It's Devo (1982), the album retained the synth-pop sound of their previous few records, with an extensive focus on the then-new Fairlight CMI Series IIx digital sampling synthesizer. Despite the popularity of synth-pop in 1984, the album was a critical and commercial failure, peaking at only No. 83 on the Billboard 200 and ultimately leading to Warner Bros. dropping the band from their label. Most of the band members have stated that they were not satisfied with the completed album and the band went on hiatus for four years following its release. Although Devo would release two studio albums through Enigma Records, they would not release another studio album through Warner Bros. until their ninth Something for Everybody (2010). Production Shout was recorded over a period of ten months between July 1983 and February 1984, in sessions that took place at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, California. Gerald Casale has stated that Mark Mothersbaugh purchased the Fairlight CMI with band money and introduced it into the sessions, and that he reluctantly agreed to its use because he'd heard that Depeche Mode had used one. After some experimentation, Casale and other band members were dissatisfied with the results, so he suggested centering the album around the use of bass, drums and guitar, reserving the Fairlight for sequencer lines, "scary sounds" and "abstract element[s]". Mothersbaugh eventually rejected this idea, and as a result, Casale began withdrawing from the sessions.