Now Twist & Shout

Embracing hyperfixation as a bit

Author

Jesse Raub
June 24, 2024

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Give in to ancient noise

When my therapist asked if I’d ever considered that I might be neurodivergent, I wasn’t sure if I should have told her about the time I listened to “Joey” by Concrete Blonde eighteen times in a row. For one, the song rips. For two, it tells an incomplete story—the best kind. Written as a direct plea to an alcoholic former lover from a person struggling with their own worth, “Joey” gives us glimpses of how the relationship floundered through Johnette Napolitano’s incredible vocal delivery. It’s an immersive world without a beginning or ending, a consistent looping cycle of abuse and forgiveness and heartache all available only through the interpretation of the listener. When Napolitano sings, “Joey, I’m not angry anymore!” the listener’s reaction is immediately, “Well, you should be!”

It’s a type of storytelling I’m obsessed with. You get it in shows like Mad Men and movies like Frances Ha or Phantom Thread or comics like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles where the pieces just never fully connect. These are all great examples of the Soviet montage theory, though I don’t know if Sergei Eisenstein would agree that “Joey” is a prime example of montage. He was a bit more stuck on the idea that montage is specifically a film phenomenon. I think he’s missing out on the fact that the third volume of The Invisibles is just as montaged as Battleship Potemkin. And if “Joey” isn’t montage, then, well, fuck me and the newsletter I rode in on.

For those of you who aren’t overly reliant on a freshman Intro To Film Class, the Soviet montage theory basically states that cutting brief scenes together can tell a bigger story. It’s sort of the “jazz is about the notes you don’t play” for movies. For anyone who grew up in the USA throughout the 80s and 90s, we understand montage as the ultimate tool of the training sequence. Time is passing at a rate not equal to what we’re seeing on screen as Rocky punches sides of beef and runs up the stairs. Piece by piece, our brain connects what’s happening for us: he’s getting stronger.

Other types of montage are less forgiving. The ending of Mad Men, for one, skips a few intermediary scenes that we’d normally expect for easier digestion. Imagine, if you will, that montage operates on a connect-the-dots system: if your diagram is missing a few of said dots, then yeah, you might not understand it’s a brontosaurus you’re supposed to be looking at.

So, what does this all have to do with Devo?

Well, the hyperfixation has struck again.

A few weeks back, while I was waiting for a coffee at a local café, Devo’s “Gates of Steel” came on over the sound system. It’s the seventh song on their breakout Freedom of Choice album (the one that has “Whip It” on it), but it strangely feels out of place. Freedom of Choice was basically their third album in three years (give or take), and Devo’s first two full-lengths were much more indebted to sardonic, snide skewerings of human behavior. When Freedom of Choice dropped, the band kept the content but shifted closer to radio-friendly pop. “Girl U Want” and “Whip It” are pure Billboard bait earworms with subversive underpinnings. The rest of the album follows a similar formula. And then, well, you have the opening guitar chord of “Gates of Steel.”

Here, see for yourself:

The song has inherent power and momentum that immediately grabs you. It’s a simple four-chord structure that repeats shifts for the chorus and holds steady through the bridge, giving ample room for arpeggio synth and guitar licks to fill the space. But what’s really captivating is the urgency in Mark Mothersbaugh’s lyrical delivery. He’s got a message for the world, and it’s a bleak one.

“Gates of Steel” has ambiguous lyrics tying references to early rock and roll (“Twist away/Now twist and shout” / “Give in to ancient noise/Take a chance, a brand new dance”) to the band’s general theory of de-evolution (“The ape regards his tail/ He's stuck on it / Repeats until he fails/ Half a goon and half a god”). But without a throughline, we’re stuck with a sinister pastiche implying a cyclical doom for the human race as it’s captivated by pop culture.

I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head for weeks. I wake up with this song blaring in my brain. When I walk down a quiet, tree-lined street, I hear the chorus ringing in my head. If I were part of MKUltra, this song would be my activation. The song is a series of subconscious commands that never fully complete the picture of what I am supposed to do.

In the general theory of montage, the media consumer should be able to tie things together. Now, that’s not always true: Martin Scorsese’s mob movies are built on the idea that individual scenes will tell the bigger picture. That doesn’t always connect. You can find multitudes of writings on the idea that Scorsese only makes gangster movies that glorify the lifestyle—some even from film critics. But when Scorsese’s ideas do connect, it’s a supremely rewarding experience. It’s a puzzle that our brains are working out for ourselves. And it presents the work as something to be analyzed, digested, contemplated, and revisited.

The obtuse angle of “Gates of Steel” makes it almost maddeningly addictive to listen to. With no concrete interpretation, the song starts to shift away from montage theory and directly into impressionism. It’s an anthem for a new era that’s directly in our past. When “Gates of Steel” was released, “Twist & Shout” was only 20 years old. Now, “Gates of Steel” is almost 45 years old, and it still hearkens a vision for a future that’s still just as prescient as it was when it was delivered to a live audience of a failing sketch show. It’s almost fitting that “Gates of Steel” was Devo’s choice to perform on Fridays, ABC’s poorly conceived attempt to rival Saturday Night Live. What better place to tell the audience they’re part of a declining system than a doomed attempt at commercialized competition?

And so hyperfixate I must. I put the song on when I walk the dog. I put it on when I drive to the store. I add it to my workout playlist. I sing it in the shower. Each repeat listen is a chance to decode the song further. If I put it on repeat, I can just let it wash over me time and time again.

The intro of this piece suggests that the most engaging forms of media are the ones that give you most of the middle while leaving the beginning and end available for interpretation. But “Joey,” for me, has been supplanted by “Gates of Steel,” a story that has no beginning, middle, or end. When my hyperfixation kicks in now, it’s not because I’m completing the story in my head. It’s because I don’t know how to decipher the code laid out for me. There’s no real way to understand exactly what they’re trying to say with the lyrics that are on the page.

But maybe if I listen to the song just one more time I’ll be able to figure it out.

Read

As much as I love narrative, more than anything, I’m a sucker for story. I want to be able to zoom outward and look down at the thing and see how the beats move along, how the progression sorts itself out, and find satisfaction in the work overall. That’s probably why I’m so obsessed with decoding song lyrics in the aforementioned paragraphs. I had a hard time grabbing onto the narration of The Knockout Queen at first and wasn’t totally sold on its style. But bit by bit, as the story unfolds, the story of The Knockout Queen becomes this impeccable, perfect shape. Finishing this book was a great reminder that You can’t assess a novel until you finish it. Without getting too much into the plot, The Knockout Queen follows the unlikely friendship of two high schoolers in a wealthy but small Orange County community and how their devotion to each other becomes a mode of survival against their unreliable families. The rest of the story beats are better to uncover while reading.

Watch

This week, I flew out to Seattle for work, and due to it being my first flight in five years, I got a little queasy. Instead of trying to watch something new, I threw on something that I knew would be familiar. Even though I’d just watched The Departed earlier this year, I was riveted. The pacing is sublime, the performances are great, and there’s so much interesting tension between how Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters deal with the situation they’re under. Every once in a while, an auteur will make a splashy, tightly constructed blockbuster that elevates the College Dorm Room Poster genre. The Departed is that movie.

Listen

I was never really a metalcore guy growing up, but the more I’ve gotten into metal and beatdown hardcore in the last few years, the more I’m starting to get it. I’ve always liked the Year of the Knife albums, but No Love Lost is the debut of former bass player Madi Watkins taking over vocal duties for the band. The songs shift further into grind territory than previous albums, but the riffs are just as punishing and huge, and the album—recorded by Kurt Ballou, naturally—sounds incredible. The band had a terrible van accident just before this album was released last year, and Madi spent months recovering in the hospital. She’s now back and playing again, and if you at all like this record, go buy it to help them pay off their medical bills.

Consume

I had some really great oysters here in Seattle, along with a classic local fast-food burger. incredible lentil sambusas at the farmers market, a cheddar pretzel roll from a fantastic bakery. But this week I can’t stop thinking about these dang mini peanut butter cups. I saw people online talking about how Reese’s went down in quality and the Justin’s brand is a substitute, but not as good. This is all incorrect. Reese’s has essentially maintained the same quality as it always has—waxy, highly processed milk chocolate, overly sweet peanut butter-based filling. The problem is that we’ve become exposed more and more to higher-quality ingredients. Real peanut butter tastes so much more rich and complex than overly sweetened peanut butter filling. Actual dark chocolate had a dimension of flavor that’s undeniably exciting. Combining the two things together is a slam dunk, but it might not always meet the brain rush triggered by the ultra-sweet Reese’s. For me, the Justin’s mini cups are the best chocolate-to-peanut butter ratio, and I think if you’re not as satisfied by Resse’s anymore, cut own a little on your Reese’s intake, taper it off to zero, and transition to a Justin’s instead. I think you’ll find, much like diet soda, that the moment you remove it from your diet, a Reese’s cup tastes absolutely weird and chemically and manufactured when trying to reintroduce.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.