Pere Ubu’s Lost Landscapes:

On the Road Again

Music feature for The Stranger, 6/25/98

For those who came in late, including over-21ers who weren’t born when Pere Ubu first formed, some things to know:

They’re not punk, nor are they `new wave.’ They were originally part of a tiny proto-scene in Cleveland during those Doobie/ Ronstadt dark ages of the early ’70s. The band’s founders, David Thomas and the late Peter Laughner, believed rock should mean something other than stadiums and cocaine. But they also didn’t settle for the AM-pop revivalism of the Ramones and Blondie.

Freed from career considerations (even “alternative” career considerations), Pere Ubu could produce perfect gems of energetic rock ‘n’ roll (the ’76 45 “Final Solution”), totally-listenable experiments in joyous dissonance (the ’80 track “Not Happy”), and LPs of noisesome rambles that never degenerated into self-important noodling (The Modern Dance); all kept together by Thomas’s high yet forceful voice. They knew the rules of rock-song construction, and precisely where and when to break them.

They haven’t been continuously together these 23 years; yet this tour isn’t a formal “reunion.” Eleven people played in various versions of the original Pere Ubu from 1975 to 1982. When Thomas officially went solo, he continued to record and tour with some of his erstwhile bandmates. Four of those old Ubu musicians were in the band’s 1987 re-formation; Thomas and original guitarist Tom Herman remain in the five-piece group now touring.

Today Thomas makes both “David Thomas” records and “Pere Ubu” records. The essential distinction: The Thomas solo records go into whichever musical directions Thomas chooses to pursue; the Ubu records build on the band’s guitar/ synth/ vocal heritage. Players for both groups are signed to one-album contracts (Thomas calls them “project-years”).

They’re an indie band, but not religiously so. They started with self-released 45s at a time when nobody was doing that. They’ve bounced around various major, major-distributed, and full-indie labels on two continents ever since. Currently, the old stuff’s being reissued on Geffen (including the box-set retrospective Datapanik in the Year Zero); their two newest albums (plus old and new Thomas solo affairs) are on Portland’s Tim/Kerr Records and U.K. indie Cooking Vinyl.

They have the technology. Instrumentation on the new Ubu CD Pennsylvania includes several organs, digital and analog synthesizers, tack piano (sounds like a grade schooler’s toy piano, only in tune), theremin, and computer-generated voices, along with the expected guitars and percussions (often used in unexpected ways). But as Thomas insists in the album’s press kit, “We aren’t experimental…. We know what we’re doing. We don’t need to experiment.”

The new album isn’t quite like the last one. The ’95 Ubu release, Raygun Suitcase, edged toward the rock half of the band’s art/ rock equation. Pennsylvania strays closer to the art half.

Pennsylvania can be interpreted as a meditation on a lost American landscape (or being lost on said landscape), as observed from repeated tour-van treks separated by long stints away. (While the band’s still officially based in Cleveland, Thomas now spends most of his non-touring days in England, where his biggest audience has always been.) It should be listened to from start to end, preferably on a car stereo while on a lonely stretch of Interstate in the wee hours. Track after long track of the most hypnotic driving music since Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” (with Thomas growling or drawling instead of his more familiar chirping) are interrupted at the 42-minute mark by a pair of quirk-pop arousal tunes, followed by one uptempo rocker (“Wheelhouse”), representing the band finally arriving and playing its gig. Then, three minutes of silence; then, 15 minutes of bonus tracks put you on the road again with avant-jazz-like variations on the album’s prior instrumental themes.

The words are as eerie as the music, if not more so. From the opening track “Woolie Bullie” (no relation to the oldie of the same name): “Culture is a swampland of superstition, ignorance, and abuse. Geography is a language they can’t screw up. The land and what we add to it cannot lie.”

The band’s name is now just a name. It was originally taken in honor of dada playwright Alfred Jarry’s antihero. But now, Thomas says “Dada and surrealism are an historical curiosity with no relevance as a living art. Dada and surrealism is what you do when you’re 17, a thing of youth that should be put away with maturity.”

Fortunately, Pere Ubu’s music just keeps getting stronger with the years. Having dropped punk’s angry machismo long ago, Thomas finds himself still growing into his art: “Why do you think after more than 40 years that juvenile social posturing has any relevance to rock music?”

Online Extra: A brief email interview with David Thomas

1. Do you now see yourself viewing the American landscape from the point-o-view of an emigrant? How have your long stays outside the country affected how you see it when you get back?

No. They don’t.

2. Is rock n’ roll any worthwhile pursuit for people near or beyond the age of 40?

Yes.

3. I’ve known bands whose members all live in different states. How do you logistically organize a band while living on a different continent from the other members?

There’s nothing to organize that can’t be done by phone. The only difference is cost of transport.

4. What’s it like to be called an Influence by musicians who don’t sound a thing like one another (or you)?

It’s not anything.

5. Have you any advice to all the would-be indie musicians out there?

Quit.