Pere Ubu: Raygun Suitcase

I've been feeling like a curmudgeon with the number of my albums that I've described in terms between luke warm and plain negative. So it's great to be able to say how much I love this one.

I've travelled some long distances to see David Thomas and Pere Ubu play live, and sometimes I've been wondering why I went out of my way — only for the gig to reveal a moment when time slips a gear and suddenly I realise, That's why I'm here. This album is full of those moments. Drunken accordion-led shanties, bass riffs The Pixies would be proud of, frightening wheezy vocals, and lurches of the most extreme, angular energy.

I think this is definitely my favourite album from Ubu's later period. Though hearing it again makes me want to dig out the others and listen intently for a day or two. I was thinking this would definitely be one of my Top 50 albums. Then I realised that creating the idea of a Top 50 could be a rod for my own back: I'll end up with 125 albums in it.

Does this album have a weakness? It's over an hour long, and you could argue that it sags a bit about two thirds of the way through when the songs do the avant bit in avant garage (that's Ubu's trademark term, by the way). To test this theory I tried listening to it in two separate sittings last night. At the end of the second sitting, I was so excited (and also quite drunk, but that's another story) that I pressed play and listened to the first half again. Theory falsified, as Mr Popper would say.

I think I used to keep this CD in my office in the Workstation — this would be 1996 or 1997 — and play it in the evenings when I was working alone. So I think that's why the album kind of lodged itself in the back of my brain, rather than the front.

Electricity is one of my two favourite songs comparing stones and people (see lyrics). When the random dice will pick out the other one from my collection, no-one knows.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Album info from official site