The newest release from Pere Ubu, its ninth full-length studio album, gives radio reporters/DJs another opportunity to come up with more creative pronunciations of its name-actually it's pear, like the fruit, oo-boo-Pere Ubu. The Cleveland band has posed even greater challenges with its music, a unique, surreal garage-rock hybrid, experimental yet working-class in nature. For almost two decades now, Pere Ubu, a four-piece in this near-original incarnation, has stood on the fringe of pop culture, taunting it with ideals and a grand scheme that has wavered little since the band's inception in 1975. Though albums such as 1989's Cloudland and 1991's Worlds In Collision moved Pere Ubu closer to popular acceptance, Story Of My Life goes back to the basic (hap-hazard, if you will) Ubu vision. Led by the inimitable presence of vocalist Dave Thomas, the band takes chances on songs like the psychotic travelogue "Postcard," which, completely improvised in one take, shows the band's ability to construct, deconstruct and invent at will. Unusual instrumentation-namely the use of a melodeon, vox calliope, the ancient analog EML synthesizer and drummer Scott Krauss' shortwave radio-colors Pere Ubu's tenacious and resonant sound, as "Wasted," "Sleep Walk," "Kathleen" and "Fedora Satellite II" will attest.

Save This Page

Digg This!