PERE UBU Ring In The New Year Zero
The song came midway through the set at Cleveland’s Agora Metropolitan Theatre, as the energy level was reaching the breaking point. The portly figure of David Thomas led a celebratory pact of music, band and audience: Don’t need a cure Don’t need a cure Don’t need a cure Need a final solution The crowd in front of the stage shouted the angst-ridden chorus of “Final Solution” with the kind of zeal brought out by waiting five years for the legendary Pere Ubu’s reunion.
PERE UBU Ring In The New Year Zero
FEATURES
by
John Gatta
The song came midway through the set at Cleveland’s Agora Metropolitan Theatre, as the energy level was reaching the breaking point. The portly figure of David Thomas led a celebratory pact of music, band and audience:
Don’t need a cure
Don’t need a cure
Don’t need a cure
Need a final solution
The crowd in front of the stage shouted the angst-ridden chorus of “Final Solution” with the kind of zeal brought out by waiting five years for the legendary Pere Ubu’s reunion. The show’s peak arrived and held steady for the next hour. At limes, the dedicated gyrated like puppets on a unified string to the combination of Thomas’s warblings and the band’s complicated, danceable rock ’n’ roll.
Those in the band dubbed this “The Avant-Garage Returns.” I prefer to give it a longer, expository description: the (thankful) reformation of Pere Ubu with all of its surprising and delightful musical highlights with the added bonus of a new LP, The Tenement Year (at the time of this writing, Ubu was negotiating for a label).