Customer Reviews

Pennsylvania

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

 

 

I have been a fan of this group since their second album. I have seen them twice and David Thomas (leader and vocalist) a few times on top of that. I have 8-10 PU and DT albums. (I have even corresponded with DT.) This is a strong effort. Of course I like their first two albums, but Tenement Year and Sound of Sand are later efforts you should buy before buying this (if you can find them!). But it was a tremendous relief to buy this latest Ubu album and smile with contentment and delight. These are musicians with vision and control who know how to work together. In other words, they know how to rock, but choose to make their mark on the fringes of your consciousness. And David Thomas is exploring relatively new territory. What an amazing artist to keep fresh like this! All that said, I put on this album when I am doing housework or bills or other tedious work. Then its infectiousness comes out. But I think it has limits worth recognizing. It is ambient in nature. As such, it is extremely good, and on certain banal days cannot help but cheer you up, or at least realize life isn't so bad after all with people like Pere Ubu around to celebrate it with.

Ignore the critical drudges who inevitably take the occasion of a new UBU to talk about how much they dig MODERN DANCE and DUB HOUSING. PU's last two records are as good as anything they've ever done and that's to say they're pretty great. So be ahead of the pack and love them now. Then, if you're a critical drudge in 20 years you can say "as I said at the time..."

"Pennsylvania is the place you have to go through to get where you're going"

Pere Ubu have been blazing their own trail through the vast wateland of american pop music and culture for over 20 years...This CD epitomizes everything that is so great, fantastic, sadly tragic, visionary, awe-inspiring, and important about both the group, about our lives, and about the birthright that consumer culture and the media have stolen from us. That we are trapped in an era when real message and meaning has been displaced by glib soudbites and a subliminal corporate takeover of america that has turned most of us into passive spectators desperately searching for meaning....

This album is 10 times more relevant,revolutionary and satisfying than pretty much any other recent rock album I've heard. Maybe someday they'll actually receive some of the financial success they so richly deserve..

"Mr Wheeler ? I got an old lightbulb...been in my family 75 years...75 years&q! uot;

This Pere Ubu album is best enjoyed as a whole. From the beginning track "woolie bullie", which slides into a rhythmic cry to the flawed society, accompanied by an insect life guitar noise and a machine keyboard, to "my name is", an echoed 15 minute hidden track with the words "my name is" repeated to the point that it blends into your surroundings, Pennsylvania is a record that takes you to a world that bleeds instrumental cries. I particularly like the song "Perfume", with a slide that sounds like a knife being sharpened. This is one of my favorite pere ubu albums, next to "Terminal Tower" and "Ray-gun suitcase". Pennsylvania has the cool sound of "New Picnic Time" with earthy base and powerfully soft vocals. It is great music to listen to while your walking or commuting.
By the way, I didn't mention the other pere ubu albums to be a pretentious creep, but to get people to get those records, too.

Pere Ubu lovers will especially appreciate this cd, as it is yet another new concept that nonetheless contains the quintessentially odd PU sound and experimentation. Perhaps this album has the most innovative electronica flourishes of all their recordings. It perfectly evokes doomsday through the absurd existential master lyricist/singer/performer David Thomas, yet somehow ultimately comforts, as it's hard not to smile at these songs.

This is the second installment from the current incarnation of Pere Ubu, which kicked off wonderfully with "Ray Gun Suitcase" in the mid-90's. Where that effort was sharp and focused (almost vehement in its psychosis), this one is more subtle and nuanced, with even more stylistic variations. As the needle touches down onto the vinyl (OK, I'm old - it's actually the laser bouncing off of the disc, but that doesn't sound as good, so sue me), we're treated to the booming, thundering, sonically pleasing bombast of "Woolie Bullie". Wow, have the boys gone all populist on us??? But wait, now an extended one-note organ solo appears out of nowhere. Whew, that was a close one! Now I feel better in that I'm reassured that I'm truly listening to a Pere Ubu album. After this, the music just keeps changing colors like a chameleon. We're treated to the pensive twang of "Highwaterville", the depressive shuffle of "SAD.txt", the frenetic chaos of "Urban Lifestyle", the atmospheric and spooky "Silent Spring", the crazed eccentricity of "Mr. Wheeler", and so on. The next part of the album gets back into more familiar territory, with "Muddy Waters", "Drive", and "Monday Morning" representing what I think of as more "typical" Pere Ubu songs (and I'm not even sure what I actually mean by that). As soon as I state this, I'm forced to qualify it further since "Drive" starts off sounding like something from an early Talk Talk album! A Pere Ubu album is never anything you're going to completely get on the first listen; and that may be more true for this one than for any other in their catalog. After a while, you just let the sonic variety lift you up and drop you down, like a buoy on a stormy sea. I even like the quasi-pan-cultural ramblings of "The Duke's Saharan Ambitions" (Could this be a glancing political statement aimed at the first Iraq war from a 1998 perspective, or perhaps a premonition about W's future Iraq quagmire??? Probably not, but it's fun to imbue Pere Ubu with shamanic powers). One beef I've always had with Pere Ubu is that they never seemed to know how to end an album properly - with a strong finale that leaves you wanting more. Well, that's been taken care of here with the excellent, hard-rocking "Wheelhouse", which is easily the best album closer they've done since "Codex" off of "Dub Housing". Sometimes, when the mood is right, I even let the disc keep going so I can chill out to the extended jam of the hidden track "My Name Is..." (Could this be a glancing, precognitive dig at Eminem??? Probably not, but it sure would be fun to pit Dave Thomas against Eminem in a stare-down contest for charity). Well, if you'll all excuse me now, I feel the sudden urge to start my own antique light bulb collection.

This is the second installment from the current incarnation of Pere Ubu, which kicked off wonderfully with "Ray Gun Suitcase" in the mid-90's. Where that effort was sharp and focused (almost vehement in its psychosis), this one is more subtle and nuanced, with even more stylistic variations. As the needle touches down onto the vinyl (OK, I'm old - it's actually the laser bouncing off of the disc, but that doesn't sound as good, so sue me), we're treated to the booming, thundering, sonically pleasing bombast of "Woolie Bullie". Wow, have the boys gone all populist on us??? But wait, now an extended one-note organ solo appears out of nowhere. Whew, that was a close one! Now I feel better in that I'm reassured that I'm truly listening to a Pere Ubu album. After this, the music just keeps changing colors like a chameleon. We're treated to the pensive twang of "Highwaterville", the depressive shuffle of "SAD.txt", the frenetic chaos of "Urban Lifestyle", the atmospheric and spooky "Silent Spring", the crazed eccentricity of "Mr. Wheeler", and so on. The next part of the album gets back into more familiar territory, with "Muddy Waters", "Drive", and "Monday Morning" representing what I think of as more "typical" Pere Ubu songs (and I'm not even sure what I actually mean by that). As soon as I state this, I'm forced to qualify it further since "Drive" starts off sounding like something from an early Talk Talk album! A Pere Ubu album is never anything you're going to completely get on the first listen; and that may be more true for this one than for any other in their catalog. After a while, you just let the sonic variety lift you up and drop you down, like a buoy on a stormy sea. I even like the quasi-pan-cultural ramblings of "The Duke's Saharan Ambitions" (Could this be a glancing political statement aimed at the first Iraq war from a 1998 perspective, or perhaps a premonition about W's future Iraq quagmire??? Probably not, but it's fun to imbue Pere Ubu with shamanic powers). One beef I've always had with Pere Ubu is that they never seemed to know how to end an album properly - with a strong finale that leaves you wanting more. Well, that's been taken care of here with the excellent, hard-rocking "Wheelhouse", which is easily the best album closer they've done since "Codex" off of "Dub Housing". Sometimes, when the mood is right, I even let the disc keep going so I can chill out to the extended jam of the hidden track "My Name Is..." (Could this be a glancing, precognitive dig at Eminem??? Probably not, but it sure would be fun to pit Dave Thomas against Eminem in a stare-down contest for charity). Well, if you'll all excuse me now, I feel the sudden urge to start my own antique light bulb collection.

This album, in my opinion, outranks Tenement Year as a signal of a new version of Ubu, and it continues the notable strengths of Raygun Suitcase admirably. True, sections do grate and occasionally grow muddled. The production tends to become glutinous and gloppy instead of feral and barbed. Yet, for fans, this is a keeper.

Highlights for me are the first, the seventh, and the last, track fifteen that fades after a few minutes only to return a few more later with a vengeance and a jam that seems to flow marvelously and churn relentlessly. If you like Pere Ubu, you'll surely want to hear this album from the late 90s. I think it's one of their most varied, and the chug and chant of David Thomas' vocal style, half poet, half crank, makes an effective foil against which drums roll, synths squeal, and the bass and guitar twist and turn. The album threatens to slip into itself with similarly paced tunes, but the three strongest songs manage to wrench the works and botch the plan satisfyingly. Lyrics tend to match the mood of the ornery music: our contemporary excuse for a culture, our malaise, and our greedy and wasteful pig-headedness. Fittingly, the back cover has a primitive painting as if from a store's outside wall, of a bear chasing a man up a tree.

This issue on the British indie label Cooking Vinyl (best known for hip folk-inspired outfits) did not receive enough attention upon its release, but it sounds fresh and prescient in this decade, and deserves a wider audience. The band is vigorous and alert. The singer is armed with irony and imagery. Parts annoy, and other parts intrigue: Pere Ubu as it should be.

Highlights for me are the first, the seventh, and the last, track fifteen that fades after a few minutes only to return a few more later with a vengeance and a jam that seems to flow marvelously and churn relentlessly. If you like Pere Ubu, you'll surely want to hear this album from circa '98. I think it's one of their most varied, and the chug and chant of David Thomas' vocal style, half poet, half crank, makes an effective foil against which drums roll, synths squeal, and the bass and guitar twist and turn. The album threatens to slip into itself with similarly paced tunes, but the three strongest songs manage to wrench the works and botch the plan satisfyingly. Lyrics tend to match the mood of the ornery music: our contemporary excuse for a culture, our malaise, and our greedy and wasteful pig-headedness. Fittingly, the back cover has a primitive painting as if from a store's outside wall, of a bear chasing a man up a tree.

This issue on the British indie label Cooking Vinyl (best known for hip folk-inspired outfits) did not receive enough attention upon its release, but it sounds fresh and prescient in this decade, and deserves a wider audience. The band is vigorous and alert. The singer is armed with irony and imagery. Parts annoy, and other parts intrigue: Pere Ubu as it should be.