As part of the ongoing Discover Series, Fire Records are highlighting Pere Ubu’s prolific discography with a limited sale across the band’s releases on Fire. Valid in our UK & US Stores, use the code PU25 at checkout to receive a 25% discount.
Pere Ubu are the masters of rewriting rock ‘n’ roll’s back pages; some of the titles may look familiar but they have spent the last 47 years changing everything. They moved the goalposts and tore up the rule book; they blurred the edges and reshaped the mainstream, they captained a beautifully-designed “irony-free” rollercoaster, making the absurd make sense, and the everyday seem poetic and strange. They did it their way.
“David Thomas and company never failed to impress, intrigue, and amaze their listeners and fans,” claimed one pundit, they “lived up to their reputation for subversion,” opined another, they are “weird, wonderful and off-planet,” concluded the third monkey.
Emerging from the post punk fug, Pere Ubu etched their own blueprint, from ‘Modern Dance’ in 1978 onwards. They did albums defined by what wasn’t there, they tried it with two drummers, they misrepresented commercialism, they made the uncomfortable seem familiar, warm and funny, with nods to literary greats and trailer park lotharios.
“A brilliant band breaking every rule of aesthetics… and sounding all the more exciting for it.” Time Out
Fire Records’ Ubu-logue traces them through noises-off pop to mutated soul and skewed country, from funk and alt-rock to Lynchian cabaret crooning. Pere Ubu have boxes of goodness and individual albums all filled with subversive storytelling cutting their own route through gothic America with irony, passion and life-affirming tunes.
“In a cultural climate where anger wears big shorts, all hail the suited Kings Of Being Archly Annoyed.” Q
