Pere Ubu

If you've followed Pere Ubu for any length of time, Pennsylvania might come as a bit of a shock to you. This is mostly because David Thomas' trademark quavery, high-pitched nervous breakdown vocals don't dominate the mix (except on "Fly's Eye" and "Wheelhouse", and even in these cases it's to a much lesser degree). The guy who's singing (as it were) on Pennsylvania is the David Thomas you'd run into post-performance -- he sounds irritable and introspective, and he's hunched down (figuratively) amid the layers of music like a fugitive hiding in a cornfield. The opening track, "Woolie Bullie", is a seething mass of churning guitars that hits you like a board across the forehead; DT mutters his travelogue, barely audible, in the background. "SAD.TXT" is an understated spin on the traditional Pere Ubu pop song -- the guitars jangle melodically, the drums pulse, odd electronic noises invade the music like wandering insects and David Thomas sings along, listlessly. Off-kilter lyrical storytelling persists throughout -- listen to "Perfume" and "Mr. Wheeler" if you don't believe me. After the intensity of 1995's Ray Gun Suitcase, fans might find Pennsylvania a bit jarring -- half of it is the loud, avant garage^* rock they love, complete with abrupt invasions by harmonica, keyboard, theremin and so forth, but the other half is a sort of alternate universe Delta blues fusion thing that works, brilliantly, because this is Pere Ubu and everything they do works, brilliantly.

Pere Ubu
Pensylvania
Tim/Kerr
CD

Review by
^* Author's note: the boldfaced bit here originally said "experimental art", but when Pere Ubu reprinted a bit of this review on their website, which was mighty kind of them, they replaced "experimental art" with [censored], the phrase "experimental art" being just the sort of generalization that gets Mr. Thomas' goat, I guess. So I've removed it, not necessarily because I feel that it's wrong so much as to see if they notice -- gz