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Like most expatriates, Pere Ubu auteur David Thomas has a complicated relationship with his native land. Unknown to all but a diehard cult audience in the States, Thomas still draws much of his inspiration from America -- from his home outside of Brighton, England, he remains committed to his vision of rock as a distinctly American form of folk art. You can hear the barren urban landscapes of his hometown, Cleveland, in almost every song he writes; yet in recent years, his music has been subsidized by European governments under the aegis of various avant-garde cultural festivals (are there any events less American?). Thomas's latest effort, Bay City, offers yet another example of his creative homesickness: a song cycle inspired by Raymond Chandler's noir vision of Santa Monica -- but recorded on a Danish farm with Danish musicians.
Thomas met his Bay City collaborators, P.O. Jorgens, Jorgen Teller, and Per Buhl Acs, because they were longtime fans. "They grew up doing punk rock, and then got into theater music and film music and stuff," Thomas says of the trio, during a phone interview from his home outside of Brighton. "One of them was organizing this event, which had to do with playing in the middle of this very famous and large fountain in Copenhagen for some reason that I've never quite figured out -- but they were paying enough money that it seemed sort of churlish to ask."
"We did that, and it was kind of a disaster because it was raining at the time, and we were all wet and the equipment was all failing and it was a nightmare," he pauses to breathe and chuckle. "but we had a good time. So it went on from there."
Dedicated Pere Ubu fans will recall that Thomas demonstrated his affinity for Raymond Chandler in the band's very first b-side, "Heart of Darkness," lifting several Chandler lines wholesale. "It's something I've been weaving in and out for years and years," Thomas says of his Chandler fixation. "The time came to get kind of blatant about it." Indeed, Bay City embodies Chandler's bleak, pre-dawn urban desolation; it conjures noirish deserted buildings, neon, dark skies and darker coffee, with the drums' relentless tattoo driving a lonely horn to the edge of the sea.
 Thomas has often professed his fascination with geography, space, and objects in the landscape. Previous albums and songs are named for various locations: As David Thomas and two pale boys, he released Erewhon and Meadville; Pere Ubu's most recent studio effort was Pennsylvania. Bay City offers the songwriter another opportunity to explore the relationship between space and sound.
Listening to Thomas's music over the years, you realize that geography is destiny. No matter where he lives, Thomas will always remain a product of Cleveland, specifically Cleveland of the 1970s. The images of hulking empty buildings and frozen river banks; the recollection of better days gone by -- these elements are embedded in his work, even though he's lived so far away for so long (he moved in 1984 so that his English wife could be close to her family.) "There's not much geography here that I care about," he notes glumly. "It's alien to me, so I don't see anything in it. But that's OK. It's like living in a place that speaks a foreign language -- even if you learn the words, it's not something that you're ever going to get." |
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