Release Notes:
Bay City is an album of reinvented roots-- part salty melancholic blues, part wounded sultry jazz and part jangling swamp rock. Bay City - tales from Philip Marlowe's lost nights in a town affluent and self-contented on the surface, rife with corruption and nepotism just underneath. Blood on the face of the moon. Bones buried in the hills. Double indemnity and dark visions.
On the other side of every desert is... Bay City.
David Thomas and foreigners started life at a concert staged in the middle of the Gefion fountain, in the rain, in Copenhagen in 1996. Jørgen Teller enlisted Mr Thomas along with 2 other Danish musicians, P. O. Jørgens and Per Buhl Acs. The collaboration, recorded on a farm in Denmark between 1996 and 1999, promised a hard-edged reappraisal of American music, the lingua franca of a planet drifting into strangeness. Contrary to all logic, it is a startlingly specific cultural folkwork.
Founder and lead vocalist of legendary out-rock band Pere Ubu, David Thomas has been re-writing the rules of popular music for over 25 years. Formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975, Pere Ubu developed a sound which combined traditional rock elements with an array of sounds, synthesizers and of course, Thomas's unmistakable vocals. The band's first release was in 1978, titled The Modern Dance, and since then they have put out a consistent stream of fascinating, highly original albums, the latest being Pennsylvania (1998).
David Thomas, while playing a major role in Pere Ubu's development, has always explored implausible creative configurations, and seemingly arbitrary production methods. His first solo release The Sound of the Sand appeared in 1981 and has been followed by a further 9 releases. Thomas's musical/creative aesthetic is as broad ranging as it is, paradoxically, specific - underscored by an almost visionary awareness of our cultural situation. Indeed his tireless inquiries into the nature of social relations, folk traditions and contemporary culture have led him up some unlikely creative paths, soda stops along Highway 61 to the banks of the Yenisei River. Musically, Thomas's work takes in a range of influences, sometimes bluesy, rocky, folky and downright experimental, but always conceived in a unique way.
"One more David Thomas recording, one would think, only to once again end up open mouthed in front of the loudspeakers." - Rolf Jager, Intro
"Fractured, bent, steamy, lyrically gruff and introspective--kind of in the Tom Waits/Capt. Beefheart/Col. Bruce Hampton (Ret.)/Shockabilly-Chadbourne vein...you'll just have to check it out for yourself...it left me slightly crippled when it was all over." - jennyt, Tom Waits Bulletin Board
I would add that this, to me, is a perfect "room" record. It sounds like they are in a room with you because of the sound and it sure releases a different feel to your listening experience. Your room transforms into a dark and dirty hotel room somewhere in the US, it is dark and the rain is falling. Totally noir.
try:bay city
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