Pitchfork

Here come the holidays! And just in time, New York's Thirsty Ear Records would like to fill your stockings with some seriously seminal stuff-- by reissuing Pere Ubu's first four albums (not including their official debut Modern Dance), which have been criminally out of print for years.

Cleveland's Pere Ubu were one of the strangest, most advanced, and most uncompromising bands of the punk era. Ubu juggled, channeled and distorted their esoteric influences like the Velvets, Roxy Music, Captain Beefheart, Red Krayola, Sun Ra and the madcap spirit of Alfred Jarry's provocative surrealist drama. Hulky chemically- imbalanced lead singer David Thomas shrieks, wails, hoots, bleats, and generally does his demented, off- kilter David Byrne vocal thing. Yeah, Thomas didn't exactly have what you'd call a radio- friendly voice-- it was more like the manic squawking of some crazed, hyper- tense half-owl/ half-man.

Releasing an album seething with deformed musical ideas like Dub Housing in 1978 was to set yourself up for financial failure and virtual obscurity, of course. But in terms of sheer artistic ambition, this record blew just about anything else around out of the water. Punk was on the wane, as bands like Television and the Sex Pistols were falling apart. Rock music was at a significant creative impasse. Pere Ubu simply took conventional rock ideas and gave them a much- needed thrashing. They ripped familiar- sounding melodies and chord sequences to tiny bits and scattered the remains here, all over Dub Housing. Allen Ravenstine, the band's ingenious mad synth player, and inventive guitarist Tom Herman enjoyed crossing and blurring the lines separating free- form jazz from mainstream modern rock.

There are some discernible pop undercurrents on Dub Housing that don't hook you instantly-- rather, they tend to slowly unravel and reveal themselves with a little persistent listening. And behind all the multiform weirdness, you can certainly hear harbingers of things to come. On "Thriller!," they throw together horror movie excerpts and eerie backward voices, creating the pre- ambient formlessness of their frightening abstraction of what monster movie soundtracks should sound like. "Caligari's Mirror" presaged a lot of what non- specific experimental bands like the Arto Lindsay- era Lounge Lizards would inevitably screw around with. Elements of Thomas' style showed up later in Jello Biafra's throaty high- pitched wailing. "Blow Daddy-O" sounds like a lot of the feedback n' noise jams like your heroes Ira Kaplan and Thurston Moore now perform as a matter of course.

Ubu was well received in New York, of course, and helped to shape the sound of no-wave. And in today's disturbingly conservative times, Dub Housing still manages to stand out like a singular musical oddity in a rock and roll universe where base conventionality and bland stereotypes still captivate mass audiences everywhere. It's 1978 all over again, people, so be smart this time-- grab a copy of Ubu's Dub Housing, Lou Reed's Street Hassle, Television's Adventure, and the Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady. Try to steer clear of those Ted Nugent, Boston, Aerosmith, and Bee Gees albums your third grade pals talked you into purchasing back in the day.