[.ca] Modern Dance

Chronique amazon.fr:
Si le patronyme du groupe est pioché chez le pataphysicien Alfred Jarry, sa musique semble venir de nulle part. A écouter ses rythmes trépidants, les riffs de guitare répétitifs de Tom Herman et la voix haut perchée de l'excentrique David Thomas dont on ne rencontre guère d'équivalents que chez les Talking Heads et PIL en les personnes de David Byrne et Johnny Lydon, elle ressemble à un improbable croisement entre le blues concassé de Captain Beefheart et les chansons robotiques de Devo. Des titres comme "The Modern Dance" et "Life Stinks" écrit par le rock critic Peter Laughner sont typiques de ce punk rock arty alors que "Chinese Radiation" diffuse une ambiance plus cinématographiquement contemplative. Séminal, ce groupe du Midwest a influencé l'avant-garde new-yorkaise de la fin des 70's. --Philippe Robert

Timeless Classic:
The owner of my favorite record store insisted that I buy The Modern Dance the week it was released in 1978. Not knowing what to expect, I played it and was completely blown away by an original and unique mix of prog rock, experimental noise, 60's garage rock and punk. David Thomas' wild bellowing fit perfectly. During a year when disco dominated the airwaves, prog rock bands were truly terrible (remember Yes' Tormato?!), and the tidal wave of punk bands were often formulaic and predictable, Pere Ubu was completely fresh and different. I've listened to this album continually over the past 25 years. It's one of the few records that I'll never tire of. The Modern Dance is a great introduction to Pere Ubu.

That Ubu thing my brother!:
I have to tell you in the words of my friend Wesley Willis that this is what I am going to rap about at you right now! and it's Pere Ubu! This one of the first punk b-ands out there in the time that it was. These guys rock and roll, and rule. They're from Cleevland which was no rockin' town. Huh. I guess you think New York is it too huh? NOT!! Breakin' all the rules and sometime it sounds like breakin' some glass and metal too. Tom Herman sings like he's singing like a banshee out of hell with a heck of a parrot going on and telling him what to say to those people when it figures him out to get it out. The Clash and The Sex Pistols didn't do that kind of stuff. This had to influence everyone from the Meat Puppets to Bolton man, I'm telling you. Wis a bag I think the track "Non Alignment Pact" is first for a good reason; they break the rules. And the do it like a 45 Magnum going off. And with the next one -Dub Housing- do I have to even mention it? That was probably it want to have more than vis one but have them both if you can. Rockin' with it. They've got a synth in it too, which is great. Show them punk rockers... The new band Guitar Wolf (Japanese punk rockers) has some loudness too when they rock, but this is better. It makes me want to get up and smash my table through the d**m wall... The only question I ever didn't figure to understand ever was why that man on the cover like a ballet dancer. And is he in Cleevland too?

Smokestack lightning, indeed:
Rock and roll from the factory floor. "Non-Alignment Pact" and "Modern Dance" are the only reasons you need to buy this CD. High glare sodium pop snap. Let's pogo amid the bricks and broken glass and shattered dreams, baby.

It's just a joke, man!:
Quintessential Pere Ubu, with Humor Me topping the album with its absurd take on life & death, written after the premature death of Rocket From the Tombs/Pere Ubu guitarist Peter Laughner. David Thomas at his inimitable best! Other highlights: Life Stinks, The Modern Dance, Sentimental Journey...

I thought I'd heard everything, but...:
Just when your expectations are set, then you hear something truly different. I loved Captain Beefheart and felt that I got what it was all about immediately with him, but this...something is so innately disturbed within it. Maybe this is because David Thomas is as screwy as the proverbial cartoon squirrel. His voice is a maelstrom of total insanity and gurbling and burbling and raving - yes, I know that description is completely incoherent, but it's about as incoherent as Thomas himself is on this album - and it is Pere Ubu's signature and weakness. I simply can't sit through this album in its entirety. That's not to say that there aren't any great songs. Most of the songs here are excellent, truly innovative reinventions of popular conventions. "Nonalignment Pact" is simply one of the best songs of the '70's - straight from the intro of ear-piercing white noise that reveals tiny, tinny little minor-key melodies, to the super-catchy garage riff that carries throughout the song, to the "slow" middle section, to Tony Maimone's lead bass solo, to Allan Ravenstine's consistent air-raid white noise synth, to Thomas's very clever lyrics. "I wanna make a deal with you, girl/Get it signed by the Heads of State/I wanna make a deal with you, girl/So won't you sign my/Nonalignment Pact!" Unfortunately, it's the first and best song on the album. The title track features some of the best tape effects work I've seen in a long time, and shows Tom Herman's intelligent lead guitar work. The album's more avant-garde stuff, though, like "Laughing" and "Sentimental Journey", verges on unlistenable (and, in the case of the latter song, sometimes leaps unashamedly into that category). See, I wish that the mood would lighten. There is no palpable sense of humanism that so thrillingly infused Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" (and it is this, as well as the unbelievably complicated song structures, that makes "Trout Mask Replica" the "Ulysses" of popular music), or any of the humor, except in "Nonalignment Pact". Maybe it's exceptionally unreasonable to expect a sense of humanity from the band, because it is for so many groups. I did read that Pere Ubu was very inspired by Beefheart, so when I found it in my library, I took it out and expected something, well, more Beefheart-esque. So many things that are avant-garde are consistently mired in desperation and depression - it runs like an artery throughout the genre. I wish that Thomas would get witty more often, because anybody who could write "Nonalignment Pact" and "Humor Me" obviously has a sense of humor. It also doesn't help at all that the second-best song on the album, "Life Stinks", was written by the then-dead Peter Laughner. My rating is three-and-a-half stars, for the reasons you see above; but it is obviously different for other people. The album as a whole to me is non-cohesive, unchanging in mood and tone, and ironically mostly stocked with brilliant songs. It just doesn't hang together well.

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