Iconic Ohio art-punks PERE UBU have announced a new album for this Summer.
The Long Goodbye, which takes its name from Raymond Chandler's classic crime novel, really is long, but is not necessarily a goodbye. While stressing it's not the end of Pere Ubu, mainman David Thomas says, "This wraps up every song and story that Pere Ubu has been telling in different ways for the past forty plus years. It is one definitive hour that provides the answers to the questions we’ve been asking and delivers it up into what I consider the definitive destination.”
Unlike any other Ubu album, the material was written and arranged by Thomas using his private collection of synthesisers and drum-machines before passing them to the other members to be fleshed out.
"I’d been listening to commercial pop radio non-stop for months," says Thomas. "That’s what I wanted to rewrite and reimagine. Pop music shouldn’t be without meaning or truthfulness. We live in desperate towns and we keep on going regardless of the stench. It’s not often you’re gonna find the answers. If ever. But here is pop music the way it should sound."
The band were rejoined by legendary English drummer Chris Cutler for a show in Paris last December, where they played the songs from the album for only the second time ever, before they had been finished in the studio, and the set features here on a special bonus CD, Montreuil.
The Long Goodbye is released through Cherry Red on 12 June.