Let’s talk about albums as a whole for a second. Talk about what an album implies to me, just so we can establish a common vocabulary and an understanding of what I mean when I say album. Music is alive, I believe. Music is a living, breathing thing. An album can represent any living being and can transform along with you as time passes. It would be easy, then, to understand an album as a person, and a song as a conversation. It’s a helpful way for me to understand music.
Here’s my point: if albums are people, then one can have relationships with albums. Maybe not in depth relationships with every album you ever hear, but there are certainly some that are going to have long lasting effects on each other. The first two Pere Ubu albums are two of my closer friends, and they’ve been mentors for me. “Dub Housing,” the second one, is a thickskinned old soul, is a free thing as much as it can be without losing all semblance of sanity, and is the host to ten of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had.
The album actually reminds me of an old high school friend in that way. Earth happened around them, and they just chose to take the bits and pieces of it that they were interested in. “Dub Housing” is a collage of a cityscape glued to a proud alley cat. Certainly aware of how pop is supposed to work, how the world is supposed to work, but disinterested in favor of it’s own little continuum.
It’s an album that could resonate very powerfully these days, given the exclusive tendencies of referential humor and in jokes, of self-constructed worlds. What Pere Ubu built here is a fearsome act of western individualism built with second hand tools and no manual.
WINNER: “Dub Housing” by Pere Ubu
WHY: Timeless, hostile, and otherworldly in the ways rock ought be. Have “On The Surface,” but know that the album is a snake pit that’ll get stranger further inside.
Fermata over Whole Rest 