Critical Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | A− |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | (positive) |
The Modern Dance was critically admired from its release. Although only moderately positive initially, Robert Christgau later raised his rating a notch and wrote of the album that "the highs are worth it, and the failed stuff ain't bad" in his revised review. At the same time, Ken Tucker in Rolling Stone called it vivid and exhilarating even if it was "harsh and willfully ugly".
The album has continued to be well-regarded. Allmusic critic John Dougal writes that "the Modern Dance remains the essential Ubu purchase... It announces itself quite boldly: the first sound you hear is a painfully high-pitched whine of feedback."
Read more about this topic: The Modern Dance
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark—that is critical genius.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)