Customer Reviews

Dub Housing

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Wow, what can I add to the stuff written here already? You want a pretty band? This ain't it. You want background music for a bachelor party? This won't work (but please post on here if you do try this). However, if you want music that will stretch your mind a little, Pere Ubu might be what you are looking for.

Yeah, a friend of mine introduced me to Pere Ubu back in college. I remember that I didn't just "not like" it at first, it actually made me mad. It was too hard to get. But once you get "Codex" rolling through you're mind, you're through. ("I think about you all the time . . ." x 50!) You start to understand how the walls have ears when you listen to "Dub Housing" and how it really is swell that you've got these arms and legs flip flop flip flop.

This album insinuated intelf into my DNA when I was 18, and pretty much became the soundtrack to my warped college years. I sometimes wonder what life would have been like had that soundtrack been scored by Madonna or Guns N Roses instead of Dave Thomas.

Is this art rock? Beats me. That sounds like something you would read in a music magazine. But the sound that will come out of your speakers when you play this CD will be unlike anything you can imagine by reading these words. So go take a chance and buy it. If you like it, check out "Long Walk Off A Short Pier" by Tripod Jimmie. Or read some of Alfred Jarry's stuff.

This album is one of Pere Ubu's best, one of my all-time favorites. But this review is to rave specifically about the new 2008 remaster, now available on CD from Cooking Vinyl. The original master tape was baked in an oven to dry it out (!!, but according to Pere Ubu's own website) and it was redigitized at the highest rate possible. The result is simply incredible: amazing new detail is now audible, the unique spatial qualities of the mix are even more apparent, and it all sounds wonderful. (To make sure you're getting the new remaster, order directly from Amazon under the entry with a "release date" in 2008.) Let's hope that Pere Ubu's other Chrysallis-era masterpiece, "New Picnic Time" gets similar treatment.

This mostly dark album contains some great moments and engages the mind with its sonic experimentation that can perhaps be described as a type of psycho funk rock, more or less along the same lines as Captain Beefheart. Navvy is a burbling ditty, the title track has interesting arrangement with rhythmic and vocal variation whilst Thriller! with its muffled vocals presents quite an eerie soundscape. The tortured vocals of David Thomas have a strange charm, especially on songs like I Will Wait, Drinking Wine Spodyody and the impressive Ubu Dance Party with its rousing build-up. My favorite song on the album is the semi-instrumental Blow Daddy-o that has an ominous and hypnotic instrumental texture with background whispers. The music is art rock with visceral appeal and although Dub Housing is considered a masterpiece, my real rating is three and a half stars. I find their pop album Worlds In Collision far more enjoyable and memorable.

It's impossible to overstate the uniqueness of this band's music. Ahead of their time twenty years ago, time still hasn't quite caught up. I paid for an import version of this album (which I prefer to their first, The Modern Dance) and it was worth it. The discounted domestic is an even better deal. The bands that most closely resemble Pere Ubu are Beefheart, Can, PiL--ones that straddle the line between noise and music. This album can set your teeth on edge and your toe tapping simultaneously. David Thomas's vocals are strange and unforgettable.

Listening to this recording, it's hard to imagine that it was released in 1978. Pere Ubu is a band that has had few antecedents and few followers. Their work is an odd mix of pop hooks, noise, edgy instrumental improvisations on guitar and sax, and the always spine tingling psychovoice of Dave Thomas. Ubu is unique and in many ways hard to get into initially. My first and last Ubu experience for 20 years was the Art of Walking, the band's "anti-rock" album and after two or three listens I sold the album (big mistake probably, since the LP is worth serious bucks now.) But picking up Dub Housing, I realize now that I was missing something quite special and prophetic.

Dub Housing is a masterpiece. From the hook rich tracks like Navvy and On the Surface to the noise experiments on Thriller, this is a forward thinking album. Moments in the recording might have roots in the art-rock of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, but mixed in with that is the rock drive of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and some of the sound experiments of the Art Bears, or Henry Cow. Yet Ubu is not like any of these bands. Stand out tracks on the recording include the tense and yet funky, Navvy; the terrifying Dub Housing; the slightly wobbly Drinking Wine Spodyody, with is not-quite-together feel in the rhythm section and Dave Thomas' warbling neurotic vocal; the almost psychobeachpop of Ubu Dance Party; the noise freakouts of Thriller and Blow Daddy-o; and the superspooky stalker music of Codex. But to me the cut that most perfectly depicts Ubu on this CD is Caligari's Mirror. The cut is a wild take off on the sea chantey "What Can You Do With a Drunken Sailor" delivered with barely controlled paranoia by Thomas, which then morphs into a bright pop-hook chorus. The song is layered with keyboard white noise and Tom Herman's tense guitar licks. This captures the tension in Ubu between art and rock; between paranoia and hilarity.

Pere Ubu is not easy music, though, with their well crafted pop hooks, they are more accessible than Captain Beefheart, the band they most resemble. Dave Thomas' vocals are the signature of the band, and if you don't like his brand of warbling and his thin tone, you won't like Ubu. But listening now with 21st Century ears it's hard to imagine a rock band that goes farther than Ubu. Their influence can be heard in the work of Sonic Youth, Radiohead, and perhaps arguably even Nine Inch Nails. Love them or hate them, Pere Ubu was probably one of the most important alternative bands to have come out of the 70s, and one that still sounds outré even 25 years later.

The stylistic mechanisms were already in place on Pere Ubu's first LP, "The Modern Dance," but when "Dub Housing" came out in early '79, all you could do was marvel at five incorrigible humanists being struck by the same bolt of lightning. Maybe David Thomas wasn't yet in a position to completely suborn Pere Ubu's music to his own crotchets, but Thomas sure thought he was, so maybe he did, in a way - the lyrics aren't much different from those on "The Art of Walking." You wouldn't know it without a lyric sheet, though, because this is where Pere Ubu's explosively communal anti-system was at one with its subject matter: the frisson of their bohemianism against the industrial corpse of the Cleveland Flats - here, illuminating both a physical and emotional geography just before it vanished. Devotees cite Allen Ravenstine's white noise counterpoint as the key, if not generating principle, but I think the real secret weapon was Tom Herman's guitar doubling as a second (often primary) vocal line. Like Pauline Kael once said about Dreyer's "Passion of Joan of Arc": even though it's silent, you recall hearing words spoken.

How does one describe this original, witty and dadaist band to the uninitiated? It's not an easy task, since there was liitle before Ubu to anticipate it's music and few since who have dared to follow in their footsteps. Take the static synths that blare like a short wave between frequencies, herky jerky(but excellent) rhythyms, inverted guitar skronk and the demented inner child voicings of David Thomas, season with Captain Beefheart, The Stooges, a little Eno and top off with a Kraut-Rock influence, and there you have it. Dub Housing is not for the week of heart, but if any of the ingrediants that I mentioned intrigue, enjoy an adventurous album.

P.S. Codex will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up! Guarunteed!!

The most interesting thing to me about Pere Ubu's "Dub Housing" is that vocalist David Thomas surrounded himself with musicians, not noisemakers. Guitarist Tom Herman, drummer Scott Krause, bassist Tony Maimone, and multi-instrumentalist Allen Ravenstine were all serious musicians. Imagine what it would have been like if the Sex Pistols had actually known how to play their instruments, and you have the beginnings of an idea of how to approach Pere Ubu. Hell, they were capable of downright catchy hooks, like the absurdly pop-friendly "di-ni-nah-nah, di-ni-nah-nah, di-ni-nah-nah, na-na-nah-na" chorus on "Ubu Dance Party." It is almost as though despite their sincere efforts to be strange, they couldn't help but be approachable. For a band determined to mine the outer limits of rock'n'roll, they were eminently listenable and a ton of fun. Yes, Thomas's wobbly voice takes some getting used to, but less than you'd think. This is not dreary experimentation--it's fun, and also funny.

...Pere Ubu would be hailed as one of the most original musical acts to come out of America in the last thirty years. Instead it's almost total obscurity. I'm always amazed at the sheer number of "informed" music lovers who have never even heard of them. Truly sad. I was looking through some SPIN Record Guide thing and they had little boxes where people from bands would list their favorite records. I was astonished the number of times Dub Housing and Datapanik In The Year Zero appeared. Greil Marcus gave them gushing admiration as well while simultaneously trashing the NY and LA scene of the same time period, saying the very best was coming straight out of Cleveland. I agree. This work, along with Terminal Tower and Modern Dance, is a great starting point. I think this album holds together as a cohesive unit better than the other two. If they had released Terminal Tower as just the original Datapanik In The Year Zero E.P. and left off the last few tracks, I wouldn't be saying that. Something about this album is so cold and wintry and bleak, and I always crack it out at that time of the year.

Subtly creepy. Get a copy of this as soon as you can. Play at loud volumes when applicable. Repeated close listenings bring great rewards.