The Future Keeps Catching Up to DEVO
DEVO
Murat Theatre at Old National Centre
Indianapolis, IN
Mutate, Don’t Stagnate Tour
On Tuesday night, the Murat Theatre in Indianapolis became ground zero for a devolutionary experiment. The subjects willingly filed into the historic Murat Theatre, many wearing red Energy Dome hats like devoted members of some futuristic cult assembled to witness the last surviving prophets of American absurdity.
Fifty-three years after forming in Akron, Ohio, the band emerged before a packed Murat crowd to deliver another chapter of their “Mutate, Don’t Stagnate” tour, a slogan that feels less like a concert tagline and more like a desperate survival guide for modern civilization.
For decades, DEVO’s central theory of de-evolution, that mankind is not advancing but regressing into increasingly irrational behavior, has been treated as a clever joke. In 2026, it feels less like performance art and more like investigative journalism. That uncomfortable truth hung over every song.
“Peek-A-Boo!,” “Going Under,” “That’s Good,” and “Girl U Want” arrived with machine-like precision.
Then came “Whip It.” The song that refuses to die. What could have easily become a nostalgia exercise instead felt strangely contemporary. The song’s absurd optimism collided with a culture that often seems determined to prove DEVO correct.
Throughout the evening, costume changes, bizarre video segments, and multimedia interruptions kept the audience suspended somewhere between a concert, a corporate training seminar, and an emergency broadcast from the future.
Following the tongue-in-cheek “DEVO Corporate Anthem,” the politically charged “Freedom of Choice” landed with enormous force. Written decades ago, the song’s commentary on conformity, consumerism, and manufactured freedom feels startlingly current.
Most legacy acts survive by recreating the past. DEVO survives because the future keeps catching up to them. More than fifty years after first proposing that humanity might be moving backward instead of forward, they continue to find fresh evidence every night they take the stage.
The joke, it turns out, was never really a joke.
And judging by the standing ovation inside the Murat Theatre, Indianapolis understood the assignment.
Mutate.
Don’t stagnate.
Because DEVO certainly hasn’t.
DEVO Setlist: Rod Rooter Now Video, Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man), Peek-A-Boo!, Going Under, That’s Good, Girl U Want, Whip It, Planet Earth, Carl Sagan Video, Uncontrollable Urge, Blockhead, Mongoloid, Jocko Homo, Smart Patrol/Mr.DNA, Gates of Steel
Encore: DEVO Corporate Anthem, Freedom of Choice, Gut Feeling (Slap Your Mammy), Beautiful World
