LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

All of the Pere Ubu albums are absolutely essential to any music enthusiast, but this is the essential of the essential. Released in 1978 on Blank (Mercury) Records, The Modern Dance announces itself quite boldly: the first sound you hear is a painfully high-pitched whine of feedback, but then Tom Herman's postmodern Chuck Berry riffing kicks off the brilliant "Non-Alignment Pact", and you soon realise that this is punk rock unlike anything you've heard before. David Thomas' caterwauling is funny and, at once moving. Scott Krauss (drums) and Tony Maimone (bass) are one of the great unheralded rhythms sections in all of rock, and the 'difficult' tracks like "Street Waves", "Chinese Radiation", and the terrifying "Humor Me" are revelatory and way ahead of their time. The Modern Dance is the signature sound of the avant-garage, ie. Art-rock, punk-rock, science-rock, garage-rock mixing together joyously and fearlessly.