Latest Release
- MAY 26, 2023
- 10 Songs
- The Modern Dance · 1978
- The Hearpen Singles · 1978
- The Hearpen Singles · 1978
- The Modern Dance · 1978
- Dub Housing · 1976
- Dub Housing · 1976
- The Modern Dance · 1978
- The Modern Dance · 1978
- The Modern Dance · 1978
- Dub Housing · 1976
Essential Albums
- The title for Pere Ubu’s second album came from a drive the band took through Baltimore while on tour in early 1978. The streets were empty, and Jamaican music played on the stereo—spacey and repetitive and a little eerie. Block after block of identical row houses disappeared behind them. Look, singer David Thomas said, dub housing. It’s a quick story, but it gives you a good picture into the band’s world. Released in 1978, Dub Housing proved that not only were the members of Pere Ubu open to the abstractions of something like dub (“Blow Daddy-O”), but that they approached the straight lines of punk with a lateral sense of humor more indebted to French surrealism than American rock ’n’ roll. The result was a mix of high and low—featuring both experimental subtlety (“Thriller!”) and lunchpail brutishness (“Navvy”)—that the band’s drummer Scott Krauss once called “avant-garage.” As for Thomas: Depending on how you looked at it, the singer was either a philosopher teasing out the repetitive absurdity of language, or just a moron barking his inner monologue to whoever happened to be passing by (as evidenced by the haunting “I did this/And I went there/And I think about you all the time” on “Codex”). It was hard to tell if he was a Homer Simpson-type written by Samuel Beckett, or a Raymond Chandler detective investigating his own shadow. On Dub Housing, Pere Ubu comes off as smart as Talking Heads, but only half as showy; as dark as Public Image Ltd., but funnier. This is a group in touch with its mystical side in ways that felt totally different from the wit and intellectualism of post-punk. And Dub Housing is the album that gave rise, even if indirectly, to bands like the Pixies and Nirvana, as well as also the overstimulating style of hyperpop, in which manic blasts of sound try to convey the limits of what we can logically process, and how. But maybe we shouldn’t overthink it: Part of what makes Dub Housing so inspiring is that, in the end, it comes from the gut.
Artist Playlists
- Art-punk innovators who chose a lasting legacy over commercial success.
- Punk legends and up-and-comers have taken cues from these icons.
- The pioneering punks stay true to their weird ways.
Singles & EPs
Compilations
About Pere Ubu
One of the American underground's most influential bands, Pere Ubu express the chaotic angst of their times with apocalyptic fervor and surprising humanity. Frontman David Thomas' absurdist warble and rapturously demented lyrics defined the group as much as their self-destructing melodies, scattershot rhythms, and industrial-strength dissonance, all of which appeared on their 1975 debut single, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," and 1978's debut album, The Modern Dance. On later efforts like 1989's Cloudland and 1993's Story of My Life, Pere Ubu became more accessible, but their idiosyncratic vision remained undiluted by frequent hiatuses and lineup changes. The band welcomed the 21st century with uncompromising albums like 2002's St. Arkansas, and their momentum continued into the 2010s and 2020s with works like 2013's Lady from Shanghai and 2023's Trouble on Big Beat Street reflecting a literate, volatile sound and viewpoint that was unmistakably Pere Ubu.
- ORIGIN
- Cleveland, OH, United States
- FORMED
- August 1975
- GENRE
- Alternative