Pere Ubu Album Reviews

Go to:

Datapanik in the Year Zero EP (1978)
The Modern Dance (1978)

Datapanik in the Year Zero EP (1978)

8.5

Heart of Darkness / 30 Seconds Over Tokyo / Cloud 149 / Untitled / Heaven

Datapanik Even though it was only released in 1978, the five songs appearing on the band's debut EP had already been released as singles (though "Final Solution," the A-side to "Cloud 149," is absent for some reason) during the past few years, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo / Heart of Darkness" dating even as far back as 1975, when the band's line-up consisted of former-Rocket from the Tombs members Thomas and Laughner, further accompanied by Tom Herman (guitar), Tim Wright (bass), Allen Ravenstine (keyboards) and Scott Krauss (drums). Three decades after its release, the apocalyptic doom of the first two tracks is still as haunting as ever. A similar claim has been made about legions of bands, but Pere Ubu really sounded unlike anyone else. The guitar interplay occasionally recalls Television's duo of Verlaine and Lloyd, but the New Yorkers were never that interested in musique concrete and trying to create otherworldly sounds that wanted to rob the music of its humanity. "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" features some classic Ubu guitar playing, two contrasting layers that superficially have nothing in common, one guitar placing accents in machine-like Modern Timesfashion, the other playing the distorted key melody over and over again. All the while, the rhythm section thuds and thumps on and on while Thomas adds his paranoia to the proceedings. The keyboards experiments aren't as prominent as they'd become later on, but Ravenstine's synth farts already reach beyond Eno's ideas. It's a dark, repetitive and foreboding groove that suddenly accelerates almost halfway into the song with an almost childishly stubborn metronome rhythm, two note-bass figure and the sound of feedbacking guitars nearly collapsing in a climax of controlled chaos. It's psychedelica swiping its foundation from under its own feet, even though that first guitar eventually returns to lead the band to the main theme again. The song not only perfectly captures the post-industrial zeitgeist that goes with the realization of a nuclear threat, but the music itself actually adds to this process of dehumanisation by letting a-tonal, even a-musical sounds appear (as well as desperate cries over the intercom) and take control (although the artists ultimately decide for how long, of course), as such imitating, ridiculing the processes and mechanisms that shape society and modern life, making the notion of entropy tangible.

"Heart of Darkness" continues the unsettling vibe with a mechanik groove and Thomas, split in two halves so that he can converse with himself. Like "30 Seconds," it seems to refer to a potentially disastrous scenario (shadows on the wall and faces no longer fitting human forms), yet it also seems to be infested with a sense of nihilism or even resignation ("I don't see anything that I want"). After a Television-styled break, the song culminates in a frantic finale, with Thomas' foam-at-the-mouth delivery - which would become one of his trademark tricks - almost stealing the band's thunder. The remaining three songs, recorded/released in 1976-'77, reveal a more playful, surrealist band at work, tearing up the place with shorter, more energetic songs that have as much right to claim importance in the genesis of punk as the music of their New York contemporaries. "Cloud 149" develops an almost funky groove that's as much Velvet Underground as it is late 50s rockabilly, while the guitars lines get in each other's way, trip over themselves and constantly walk the thin line between playfulness and annoyance, like a hyper-kinetic 4 year-old sticking out its tongue at you. "Untitled" is basically an early version of debut's title track, another "lightweight" track, driven by a bass-line that sounds like a variation on VU's "European Son" and a Thomas who jumps into total theatricality for the first time. Again, there are instances were the band are ridiculing the process of making music, with sudden whooshes of synth and awkward disruptions that one can imagine could come from someone randomly switching buttons on and off. "Heaven," finally, goes to show that the band not entirely breaks with the black music-tradition, by incorporating a catchy reggae-pop vibe, which turns it into its least confrontational song. Even though it lacks the consistence of a truly great release, Datapanik in the Year Zero suggests the final word about post-punk had already been said even before the "genre" was properly conceived.

Note: This EP is no longer available separately (hasn't been for a few decades, if I'm right), but you can find it in its entirety on the Terminal Tower-compilation, as well as on the 5-disc retrospective bearing the title Datapanik in the Year Zero, which is also (surprise, surprise) out of print and somewhat of a collector's item.

The Modern Dance (1978)

8.5

Non-Alignment Pact / The Modern Dance / Laughing / Street Waves / Chinese Radiation / Life Stinks / Real World / Over My Head / Sentimental Journey / Humor Me

The Modern Dance Forever associated with their hometown, the industrial and lacklustre Cleveland - just like it’s impossible to find an article on Patti Smith or Television that doesn’t mention NYC –, Pere Ubu was one of the bands spawned by mid-70’s proto-punk collective Rocket from the Tombs (the other ‘famous’ one was The Dead Boys). Initially evolving around guitarist Peter Laughner and “singer” David Thomas (who used to call himself Crocus Behemoth), Ubu pursued an entirely different and more difficult direction than the Boys. Being equally influenced by Beefheart’s surreal, jagged avant-blues and the burgeoning punk scene in NYC that Laughner had absorbed, Pere Ubu seemingly wanted to combine artiness with straightforwardness, intellectual metaphors with sonic punch, creating some of the least accessible rock of the late ‘70’s in the process. On top of those key influences, the band incorporated anything from Krautrock to traditional rock ‘n’ roll and even theatrical gimmicks into their art. It took a few years and line-ups to achieve stability, and when it finally happened, Laughner had not only left the band, he’d died in 1977 as a direct result of alcohol and drug abuse. Still, the legacy of the prime Ubu line-up (1976-1982) was a key influence in the evolution of many bands, among which obvious examples Julian Cope (who recorded a cover of “Non-Alignment Pact”) and the Pixies, but music fans will hear their spirit also live on in the music of The Minutemen, Gang of Four and tons of other edgy bands.

Even though the album introduces itself with a bang, or more correctly, an ear-piercing, industrial shriek of 30 seconds, the thing that’ll stick with you the most might be singer David Thomas’ performance. Alternately howling like the Wolf, growling like Beefheart, shrieking overexcited like a demagogue at a fascist rally, or muttering incoherently like a drugged schizophrenic in a mental ward, the man is your definition of "an acquired taste." However, no matter how self-conscious and theatrical he may be, his ‘a seizure is near’-style fits the album’s paranoid tone and metaphors for societal decay perfectly. While Thomas once argued that Ubu’s music was a “celebration of postwar-industrial America,” it’s obvious we’re dealing with an America that’s portrayed as a civilization run rampant and morally bereft. Now, before you think I’m making this all up, let me reassure you that a sizeable part of the album is quite accessible (unless you never got any further than your sister’s Bananarama albums): after the assault of Allen Ravenstine’s synthesizer, guitarist Tom Herman soon sets off into a Chuck Berry-styled riff that triggers the band’s single-minded groove. Throughout the song, Herman’s fractured style – a combination of The Voidods’ Robert Quine and Beefheart’s pupil Zoot Horn Rollo – remains attention grabbing, but there’s just so much going on. Ravenstine’s whooshes of sound weren’t unlike anyone’s before him (except for maybe a few German pioneers), while the awkward groove of the rhythm section will have you wonder whether it can really be that crude on an art-rock album, because that’s what it is. Nevertheless, they turn skewed minimalism into an advantage, and it’s hard not to consider them incredibly influential on several classic rhythm sections later on (Joy Division, The Fall, etc). It all sounds rather intimidating - and I haven’t even started about the industrial hisses and other sounds that are constantly popping up in the background -, but the chorus (a guy sealing non-alignment pacts with all the girls he knows? WELL YEAH!) is actually one to sing along to! Also, with songs like the title track, it’s not hard to guess where the avant garage-tag came from, as the song sounds like the result of the minds of a bunch of idiot savants trying to figure out The Seeds’ songbook (they actually covered “Pushin’ Too Hard” quite a lot), with lyrics that contain hints of the same anxiety that infests so many of their songs, the anxiety of losing oneself, of getting lost in “datapanik”, the fear that information can become too overpowering or even (in the boys’ own vision) be used as a weapon. It’s exactly when dealing with this matter, or the uncomfortable premonitions of “Street Waves” that Thomas’s epileptic hiccups come in great. The latter also features some more excellent fret-work by Herman, combining Tom Verlaine’s cool with Duane Eddy’s thunder.

The songs mentioned so far are probably the most straightforward – so yes, the first album half is indeed the ideal starting point – as they’re pretty radical, but not insurmountable slices of contortionist punk. Also enjoyable, and nearly a caricature of their frantic punk-funk-whatever-rock is the ultra-short rant “Life Stinks,” a nonsensical blast that obviously inspired The Minutemen’s early “Tune for Wind God” and that was originally written by Laughner when he and Thomas were still in Rocket from the Tombs. Equally awkward is also the mock-reggae (indeed) of “Humor Me,” complete with Jamaican accent, a track that’ll leave you clueless like few other songs will do. The remaining half is either less straightforward or quite alienating: the promisingly-titled “Chinese Radiation” starts off quite pretty and progresses smoothly until the song picks up a simple groove and the roar of a mass joins Thomas’ exalted program “We will purify, we must purify, for the sake of that security we all want, we will purify.” “Real World” is mainly interesting because it develops a disjointed groove that contrasts quite successfully with Thomas’ increasingly alienated theatrics, done in an even more creepy way in “Over My Head,” a sinister track that’s a successor to their earliest single “30 Seconds over Tokyo.” Despite the fact that most of this already suffices to annoy the fuck out of most people, the truly far-out, aural torture arrives with “Laughing” and “Sentimental Journey.” While I actually like the former, a horns-dominated tune that recalls what Beefheart was doing less than a decade earlier (the sax howls, moans and squeals, while the rest of the band keeps the groove of this piece of anti-music goin’ as if in a trance – even though that burst halfway the song will wake you up), “Sentimental Journey” is a piece of utter crap. I’ve always thought my tolerance level was pretty high, so I think I can deal with music that’s more about artistic statement than musicality, but making sounds with rice in cymbals or smashing glass bottles isn’t particularly interesting if you ask me. It makes me feel dim-witted. Granted, breaking glass isn’t all that happens during the “song”, there are also the panting, Thomas’ unintelligible vocals and the directionless cacophony of sound - how can I forget that? About half of The Modern Dance is classic or at least incredibly effective and several songs are interesting enough to recommend to your undoubtedly hip friends, so why did they disrupt it with an anti-song like that? Oh I forgot, that’s probably the whole idea, right? Well, OK then, most CD-players are equipped with a SKIP-button nowadays. Still, it could’ve been so great with two more songs like “Non-Alignment Pact” instead of “Sentimental Journey.” Now it’s just like a terrific piece of literature with a huge chocolate milk blot on it.