The
first thing you hear in the first song “Navvy” is the guitar playing a melody.
Then a counter melody joins it, followed by a strange scratching sound provided
by the synth player. Then the rhythm section kicks in with a thudding beat and
singer David Thomas (neither the Wendy’s guy nor the Bob & Doug McKenzie
guy) starts singing “I got these arms and legs that flip flop, flip flop” over
and over and it immediately positions the band as something different. There
were already the synthetic sounds that Allen Ravenstine was producing to make
the song sound slightly off, but between that and Thomas’s strange crowing and
lyrics, Pere Ubu set themselves apart from what anybody else was doing in rock
music. But a bit about their history first.
Dub
Housing is Pere Ubu’s second album. They’d actually already set themselves
apart from what anyone was doing with their 1975 and 1976 singles and their
first album The Modern Dance, which
was recorded in 1976 and 1977 and released on a small independent label in early
1978, but many tied the singles and parts of The Modern Dance to the burgeoning punk scene because of abrasive
textures and the speedier rush of some of the songs. Not so much with Dub Housing, which ventures confidently
into waters that only Ubu knew how to navigate. They have long called their
music “avant-garage” since it stems from the same jamming garage rock ethos
that spawned a thousand punk bands in the wake of The Stooges, but is also heavily
indebted to avant-garde music and art ranging from the Velvet Underground to
Brian Eno to Alfred Jarry’s proto-absurdist play from which they took their
name. It’s probably also worth mentioning that while so much of American punk
happening at this time is tied to the CBGB’s scene, Pere Ubu was based in
Cleveland and evolved a very different type of music. It’s additionally worth
noting for context that the same year Ubu released this album sophomore albums
by Talking Heads, Wire, and Elvis Costello hit the shelves, Blondie put out
their classic third album Parallel Lines (like
Ubu, it was their second 1978 release), Captain Beefheart returned from a few
disappointing years with the great Shiny
Beast (Bat Chain Puller), Devo, X-Ray Spex, and The Cars released their
debut albums, and Brian Eno began his first official venture into ambient music
with Music For Airports. Something
was in the air and a lot of people were drinking deeply from the same stream.
Back to Dub Housing now.
“Navvy” sounds like rock, yes, but
what’s up with this singer? Those who find David Byrne’s delivery too eccentric
will quickly learn that he’s relatively calm by comparison. Why does Thomas
keep repeating “I got these arms and legs that flip flop, flip flop” and then
follow it with “I have desire!” and a voice from above telling him “Boy, that
sound swell!” Well, first of all, because it sounds good and he’s got a great
sense of rhythm, but secondly, maybe it’s not as weird as all that. If a navvy
is defined as “a worker who does very hard physical labor” (especially used in
the context of large-scale industrial projects), it’s entirely possible that
these words aren’t just weird, but that the song is about a working class
stiff, swept around by currents of the world he has no control over, asserting
his own creative identity in a 1970’s industrial city beleaguered by financial
depression – almost sounds like punk, no? More poetic than your usual punk
approach, but still born of the same spirit. Doesn’t hurt that halfway through
the song guitarist Tom Herman tears loose with a great solo. Herman is an
unsung hero of American rock. Unless you ask me to make such a list, he’s
simply not on the lips of people making “top ten guitarists” lists, but he’s
got a unique style that falls somewhere between aleatoric noise and effects,
and a strong, rhythmic lead. He’s also buoyed (and simultaneously lifted) by
the rhythm team of bassist Tony Maimone and drummer Scott Krauss, who are – for
me – the finest rhythm section in American rock of the 70s other than their
peers in Television. And then there’s synthesizer player Allen Ravenstine, who
doesn’t use synths as glorified keyboards but uses them for their own qualities
as producers of weird noises. So when the group gets together for some real
avant-garage strangeness – as they do here especially on “Thriller!” and “Blow
Daddy-O” – it can get pretty out there. But even on those, they’re grounded by
Maimone and Krauss, which allows Ravenstine to layer strange sounds and effects
into a musique concrete soundscape on the former song, and gives Herman space
to stretch out a themeless, non-melodic solo on the latter that stands as his
finest 3 ½ minutes or so on record. And the rest of the songs – even with their
odd qualities – bear more of a relationship to rock as most of us know it. “I,
Will Wait” reads as a paean to the underground music scene with lines like “The
sun never sets on this world I have found” and the pragmatic/optimistic DIY
thought “I believe in practicalities/practicalities are possibilities” and then
nods back to Roxy Music’s first album when Ravenstine unleashes a “solo” full
of bleeps and blips that recalls Eno’s work on “Re-Make Re-model.”
The album offers so many different
moods – from the oddball optimism of “I, Will Wait” and “Navvy” to the playful
tone of “Blow Daddy-O” to the more ominous “Thriller!” or the obsessive closing
track “Codex” that it keeps you on your toes, shifting hither and yon along the
same currents that buffet the protagonist of “Navvy.” But it speaks to the
magic of Pere Ubu that they make something of the strange times they live in
and respond with a recognizable, yet compelling, strange and unique vision.
They’ve never voiced it more compellingly than they did on Dub Housing.
-
Patrick
Brown
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