There was always something faintly threatening about DEVO, even when they were dressed like escaped laboratory technicians and making middle America wonder whether Akron had been contaminated by industrial runoff. By 1984’s Shout, however, their absurdism had become so synthetically swollen that Puppet Boy could almost pass for another piece of mutant pop comedy. DEVO also have a long history of unconventional covers, from the classic Stones track I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, to Jimi Hendrix’s R U Experienced? Bex Delgado, recording as The Phantom Eyes, turns the tables on the Spud Boys: she hears the threat lurking inside Mark Mothersbaugh’s words and gives it a set of fangs.
This version of Puppet Boy takes DEVO’s original premise and drags it into the bedroom of an especially disreputable vampire. The synthesizers feel colder and more severe, the rhythm carries a steady club-floor compulsion, and Delgado sings with the cool authority of somebody who already knows which end of the leash belongs in her hand. Mothersbaugh’s lyrics suddenly acquire an uncomfortable erotic logic. Obedience, dependency, affection, and ownership begin rubbing against one another until nobody seems especially interested in establishing boundaries.
That change suits The Phantom Eyes remarkably well. Delgado approaches post-punk and dark electronic music through horror, where desire frequently comes with unfortunate contractual obligations and love can involve surrendering both your better judgment and access to daylight. There is humor inside it, too. Any cover of “Puppet Boy” that treats the title with complete solemnity would miss part of DEVO’s genetic code. Delgado preserves the perversity while turning the joke several degrees darker.
The accompanying video makes the implication explicit. Filmed by Tori Kellogg/GR4VES in a single evening, it pairs Delgado’s scarlet entity with Sett’s Puppet Boy, a willing captive whose submission appears to have become his natural state. Red satin, CRT distortion, VHS degradation, and physical closeness give the footage the grubby glamour of an 80s vampire cassette discovered behind the counter of a video store that probably should have been investigated by local authorities. Some sequences were even filmed directly from Gr4ves’ CRT, giving the images their wonderfully diseased television texture.
“I was trying to embody the spirit of not exactly a dom/sub relationship, but more like a master/servant one,” says Delgado. “This story isn’t romantic in nature, but still has that sweet feeling that the characters do take care of each other. I wanted the Puppet Boy to be not just a “sub,” but rather someone who just doesn’t really know anything else because it’s his whole life–and he has long been fine with this.”
The Puppet Boy has no great awakening coming. He knows his place, perhaps enjoys it, and The Phantom Eyes leave him exactly where DEVO put him forty-two years ago: attached to invisible strings, smiling nervously, waiting for somebody else to pull.
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