It’s no mystery how this Cleveland avant-garage institution has survived for three decades, despite innumerable lineup changes, the occasional breakup, and a lack of commercial success so consistent it looks like a strategy: PERE UBU is undergirded by the iron will of front man and sole constant member Dave Thomas. Despite his rep as a prima donna–he’s a perfectionist with an idiosyncratic definition of “perfect,” which isn’t something easily communicated to soundmen–even a bumpy Pere Ubu gig has more promise than the most inspired set from a typical headliner. Even more remarkably, Pere Ubu violates the law of diminishing returns–the band’s two most recent studio albums, 2002’s St Arkansas (Spinart) and last year’s Why I Hate Women (Smog Veil), are possibly its best. Thomas’s lyrics are threaded together by a deep poetic logic, and the chugging music, which turns on a dime between meters and textures, is both unmistakably Ubu and somehow timeless. After synth player Allen Ravenstine left in the late 80s, he became an airline pilot–I like to think that’s the only way he could feel he was in command of the same kind of power. –Monica Kendrick
