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This is not a shitty world! As long as we can count on an artist like David Thomas!
The fervent mind behind the Pere Ubu of Cleveland, OH, so fundamental for the evolution of new wave and alternative rock, Thomas has proven his erratic genius even in his solo career with outstanding albums like "The Sound of the Sand," "Variations On A Theme" (in collaboration with Richard Thompson), or this one from 1996.
Inspired by the reading of "Erewhon: or, Over the Range" by Samuel Butler, a Swiftian and iconoclastic Victorian-era writer, Thomas speaks to us about imaginary worlds neither utopian nor dystopian, crafting daring songs, devoid of melodic linearity and as sparse as they are evocative. Accompanying him this time are two pale faces, the Two Pale Boys (Andy Diagram on trumpet and Kaith Molinè on electric guitar).
The malodeon (his para-accordion) often sets the rhythm; some trumpet strokes, a menacing guitar, full of anticipation but devoid of climax, synthesizer, and theremin splattered here and there, counterpoint his vocal expressiveness as arduous as it is charismatic.
Thomas sings, growls, warbles, whispers, swarms, whimpers, sobs, coughs. And he howls at the stars. He hovers between primitivism, delirium, and sublimity. He proves to be an extraordinary interpreter on par with Waits, the one from Frank's trilogy, and Cave, the possessed one from "Your Funeral… My Trail." Thomas is a sort of angelic Beefheart. He sings desperately like a bluesman but without the blues at the bottom of his throat. Obsessed with vocal exploration and maniacally careful not to strain the notes or prolong the syllables excessively. His piercing lament (even when hidden in murmurs) is a child of rock, but abstract, tyrannically tied to artistic gesture, resulting in both elusive and necessary.
"Erewhon" is an album of sparse, slippery music. It rises halfway between erudition and spontaneity. An hermetic, surreal album, the consequence of total creative freedom. Distant even from the avant-rock of Pere Ubu, it flows towards indefinite shores between folk, jazz, and cabaret, all distorted, unrecognizable, not yet emptied, but rendered increasingly intimate. Feverishly.
Last night I dreamed I was falling.
Where do we go, I said to myself,
If I call your name and you answer crying?
If "Planet of Fools" is a kind of waltz complete with theremin, "Morbid Sky" shows a sick and mutating melody amid guitar sobs and synth breaks up to Thomas's moans, not devoid of sadism, laid over dissonant traces. The theatricality emerges from the raw "Fire" and the dilated "Kathleen" (both originating from the Ubu repertoire). "Obsession" is apocryphal rock devoid of peaks; "Lantern" is a magnificent chamber lied inscribed in a lucid half-sleep, while the concluding "Highway 61 Revisited", which has nothing to do with Dylan, curiously remixes sequences and fragments of previous tracks also with concrete noises (a dentist's drill?). In essence, it's unclassifiable music. Wild, shrill, disordered.
What Deleuze noted about Butler's book, namely that the title refers not only to No-Where but also to Now-Here, highlighting a kind of double space-time dimension that always seals the impossible realization of a current possibility, also applies to Thomas's album. But the possible impossibility does not necessarily paralyze us. Describing nonexistent places and societies can make us aware, liberating us from oppression. And where the risk of losing oneself is greatest, the forces that save us emerge maximally.
Yes. This is not the worst of all possible shitty worlds.
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