DAVID THOMAS & THE PEDESTRIANS—Variations On A Theme (Sixth International/Rough Trade):: When David Thomas, Anton Fier and Richard Thompson get together, things get, uh, different. Thomas works in more easily-digestible forms than he did in Pere Ubu while Thompson gets to work with one of rock’s most creative percussionists, well outside the boundaries of his own British folk-rock forms. Well inside the boundaries of silliness, I might add: 1 dunno what you’ll make of Humpty Dumpty lounge jazz or fine feathered rockabilly and Western Swing salutes but these guys actually make interesting music out of ’em. The three tracks Thomas recorded with a couple of exHenry Cows are also successfully nutso, although more in a Euro-art-rock vein, as you might imagine. M.D.