CLEVELAND ROCKS!!!: Proto-Punk and Art Rock In the Land of Drew Carey - Part IV
Pere Ubu: 30 Seconds Over Tokyo/Heart of Darkness and Final Solution/Cloud 149 singles
These aren't albums, but there's no way in f
ucking hell I'm skipping over Pere Ubu's early singles. Get ready for me to gush like a sad fanboy. Time to kick my ass again...
Basically this sounds like a cleaned up and classed up version of Rocket from the Tombs. And what a difference a year(?) makes. No longer do David Thomas and Peter Laughner sound like charmingly noisy amateurs. Now they sound like masters of making professional sounding garage(ish) rock that sounds like it could bring 60's garage rock into the modern era if it was released today. Some may see these singles as stepping stones to greater things, but I think that's missing the point. These may not be as self consciously experimental and arty as their albums, but they are very much worth your time.
If I had to describe Pere Ubu at this time, I'd have to say that they sorta sound like a proto-punk version of Black Sabbath. They play relatively slow and heavy-as-f
uck. The songs are longish and don't necessarily go anywhere too quickly but prefer to build up with ever increasing tension until they explode with unleashed power. Like the music, David Thomas' vocals are more restrained here than they are in RftT or later Pere Ubu, and they fit the music perfectly. Yet even if Pere Ubu isn't exactly a pop band at this time, they certainly know how to pull catchiness from the jaws of intelligent art rock.
All of this shiznit is pretty much essential, but the star of the show is "30 Seconds Over Tokyo". Just a lumbering beast of a song that crushes you with apocalyptic claustrophobia before exploding with the aforementioned unleashed power. I'm not usually a lyrics kinda guy, but I make an exception for this song. They describe the Doolittle Raid, which was the first bombing run on the home islands of Japan during WWII. The lyrics describe a terrifying, tripped out fantasy journey that sounds like the world is about to end. I could listen to this song over and over again, and will probably take up smoking weed again at some point in the future just to listen to this song while baked off my ass.
There is one odd man out though. "Cloud 149" doesn't sound a million miles away from Devo's oddball pop, but it throws a strange riff over it all that somehow reminds me of country. Weird but cool. So, I'm gonna stop now lest my fanboyism becomes truly embarrassing.