by Khagan Aslanov (@virgilcrude)
Named after Alfred Jarry’s notoriously obscene 19th century play about power, intrigue, and the vileness of the human spirit, Pere Ubu were a similarly unsettling and necessary anti-puritan presence in American post-punk since the 1970s. Led by the inimitable David Thomas, the Cleveland band existed in the margins of the movement, writing dark, frantic, and remarkable songs that would go on to influence countless bands and genres.
One always got the feeling that Thomas and Pere Ubu were less punks and more experimentalists who happened to write music in the underground, just as punk came to define its limits. Yet, in many ways, David Thomas encapsulated everything about the notion of “true punk,” whatever the hell that may mean. Big, burly, and decidedly un-sexy, he presided over Ubu shows with a dismantled, Dylan Thomas-esque authority, carving a space that—for all its hectic appearances—was wholly artistic and purely his own.
In the early days of punk where Tom Verlaine filled the role of an Apollonian poet, Richard Hell as enfant terrible, and Mark E. Smith as a Heideggerian doomsday preacher, David Thomas was a vaudevillian—keen, literary, and self-aware. He conducted both his solo albums and Pere Ubu’s output with a knowing hand, a modernist aiming to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
To lament and extol David Thomas’ long and productive life, we celebrate some of the many highlights from the career of one of the most enduring and unhinged avant-gardists of the turn of the century:
Pere Ubu - The Hearpen Singles 1975-1977 (2016)
This box-set of early brilliance on four 7” records didn’t see a compiled release until 1995, but it archives and sets in place Ubu’s 1975 apotheosis. After the break-up of Cleveland spearheads Rocket from the Tombs, its members would splinter into several factions – hyper-obscure curio The Saucers, early Bowery darlings the Dead Boys, and, led by David Thomas, Pere Ubu. Peter Laughner, a genius of the underground, whose influence is rarely mentioned but acutely felt in post-punk’s history, was still in the fold, and Ubu are already fully formed here, unleashing all of their manic theatre across nine anxious, angular tracks. All of their aspects are already on glaring display - the troubled bottle-neck patience of “Heart of Darkness,” “Street Waves” shifting between wired punk and atmospheric dub, the supremely strange balladry of “Heaven.” And then, there is “30 Seconds of Tokyo.” Clocking in at nearly seven minutes, Ubu were already beautifully unfashionable in the realm of punk. Thomas has said that “Tokyo” was the first and last time he wrote lyrics with any sort of cogent narrative. The song is Hearpen’s opener and a mission statement of sorts. “30 Seconds to Tokyo” is Thomas’ vow to write words and music that were as agile as they were macabre, as unearthly as they were connected to humanity.
Pere Ubu - Dub Housing (1978)
The Modern Dance was Ubu’s first classic, but with the much less mentioned 1978’s Dub Housing, Ubu reached for something bigger and more remarkable. All the fret abrasions, irregular rhythms, fizzing synths and Thomas’ singular lyricisms are amped and thrown up to the rafters. Thomas had fully come into his own, and beyond his words, which were becoming more and more chimerical, he experiments with all sorts of vocal tics and patterns here. He yelps and squeals his way through the gleeful “Ubu Dance Party,” bringing his already-pinched voice to the frequency of a no wave sax. Elsewhere, on the soused-sounding “Drinking Wine Spodyody,” he mirrors the wandering bass-line, inducing tremendous unease. The name of the record is a two-way pun, touching on low-income housing that lined and reverberated through neighbourhoods like the dense bass of dub music, and Thomas’ background as a Jehovah’s Witness, then called Dubs.
David Thomas and the Pedestrians - The Sound of the Sand and Other Songs of the Pedestrians (1981)
By the early 80’s, Pere Ubu had dissolved and Thomas began a sequence of bands that were essentially solo outlets for his most experimental instincts. The Sound of Sand was the first and arguably the best of these cosmic ventures, with Thomas taking everything he was listening to and composing, and shaping a gap-toothed golem out of it. His usual pastiche of post-punk, new wave, and dub is compounded by bursts of krautrock, exotica, ambient electronica, cabaret, and funk. Influences of West African folk music and progressive rock modalities are also felt throughout. The Golden Palominos, themselves an excellent and unsung art punk band, show up to give Thomas an assist on a few tracks. The album is a heady and at times difficult listen, but for those with the patience to give it a proper go, there are countless aesthetic moments to relish here. And Thomas’ voice remains the primary instrument, a most unsettling and strangely comforting presence.
David Thomas and the Wooden Birds - Monster Walks the Winter Lake (1986)
In 1986, Thomas retooled his backing band and cut this incredible LP that hews close to baroque musical theatre and stands as a singularity, even in a catalogue defined by them. The instrumentation is pared down here, with accordion and a detuned cello functioning as lynchpins for Thomas’ deformed vision. Monster is a disquieting and histrionic display, and perhaps the most focused manifestation of the dramatic tendencies that permeated Thomas’ modus. And his voice and lyrical slants of off-beat cryptic poetics mesh into Monster perfectly. For listeners who like to dive into avant-garde headlong, without post-punk elements for intermittent repose, the serenely stern procession of Monster is what they should seek.
Pere Ubu - Cloudland (1989)
By the time Ubu came back to life in 1988, the landscape of music—both underground and in the mainstream—had irrevocably shifted. Punk had buckled under the primal anger of hardcore, post-punk was on its last legs, and grunge and noise bands were rearing their ugly heads from the underground. And yet, David Thomas and company managed to score a minor hit with “Waiting for Mary” off the following year’s Cloudland.
But it’s Tenement Year that defined Ubu as the decade wound down. Thomas was beginning to tilt his head toward poppier arrangements, but the album remained as wonky and unyielding as their past work. Cutting a record built on chintzy sax and synths and off-road vocals was akin to a death sentence in the age of MTV, but Thomas seemed entirely unconcerned with good commercial graces. He continued plying his voice in uncharted territory, unafraid to be out of step with the tireless angst rising from the radio. On “The Postman Drove a Caddy,” he even presented his own warped version of Dr. Seuss couplets, carrying Ubu through the decline of their genre, as their peers began dropping like flies in earnest.
David Thomas and Two Pale Boys - Mirror Man (1999)
By the turn of the century, Thomas was in somewhat of a sweet spot. Pere Ubu were alive and well in their second coming, and his solo work continued thrashing against the boundaries of sound and acceptably good taste. He was more or less left alone to do whatever he wanted, and Mirror Man only seemed like a natural result of that autonomy. Conceived as a “rogue opera,” the piece played out like a modernist short story collection set in the midst of a forsaken truck stop town with a rotating cast of musicians, poets, and artists chiming in with tales of tragedy, desolation, and woe.
Mirror Man seemed like a logical step for Thomas, who more often appeared as a twisted architect rather than a regular musician. His writing for it also skewed toward Jarry, the playwright who gave Pere Ubu their name. The opera was staged several times, recorded in pieces for an incomplete album, and remains an obscure and endearingly bizarre entry into Thomas’ body of work.
Pere Ubu - 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo (2017)
Ubu and Thomas’ last act was one of steady productivity and unchecked artistic license. The pressure, if it ever existed, was now firmly off, and Ubu felt utterly free, a band that was making music purely for themselves. Like their peers The Fall, their lead singer was now the only constant in a rotating cast, and they were cutting LPs at a steady rate, unconcerned with commerce or public takes. Though the halcyon days were now firmly in the rearview, there was something intoxicating about a legacy act that wasn’t resting on its laurels pressing on, throwing lunacy into the ether.
Montana packed every ingredient Ubu had deployed before and projected it in high def. There are serrated guitar riffs, alienated electronic touches and grotesquely danceable progressions planted all over the album. The band’s songwriting was as assured ever, and Thomas’ voice and delivery, touched with age and slightly rougher around the edges, remained Ubu’s secret weapon. Despite its untimely end, it was a good feeling for fans to know that Ubu were out there, and that they could have continued in this mode for decades, reappearing every few years with another oddity for us to dip our toes into and talk obsessively about in forums, pubs, and record shops.