Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Practicalities Are Possibilities, May 21, 2003
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.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Have you heard about this house?, January 11, 2000
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.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tuneful dissonance, April 14, 2004
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.
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