Below in the city there’s nothing but strange talk which feels like all the faded hopes that never were
Ray Gun Suitcase is the beginning of Pere Ubu’s American road trip, setting out on the trip (Pennsylvania is the (bumpy) road and Saint Arkansas the destination), a love letter to Elvis Presley as the ultimate American icon. This is all about the fifties and sixties – Elvis, toy ray guns, big turquoise Fords with giant fins, The Beach Boys, ghost towns and roadside diners on Route 66.
It gets off to a good start. Hanging out at the Greyhound Terminal in “Folly of Youth” is unbridled young lust and David Thomas is as animated as he had been in years. Even better is the second song, “Electricity” looking at the life of a city as distinct from that of its fleeting populace, growing insane as the years go by (and the population gets denser) and it whispers to itself in the night. “Beach Boys” is one of the great rock songs of the Ubu, an anthem of marching on Cleveland (‘the home of the blues’). Those three are a tough, inspiring opening.
Then we hit roadwork, detour, and get lost in weird bizarro tourist attractions of such an ugly backwoods nature that it’s really hard to pay much attention. Christ, someone get me some strong coffee. “Vacuum in My Head” is about as obnoxious as they’ve ever gotten, but a lot of the midsection of the album is just a little more outré than necessary, as if an overly harsh reversal after the highly poppy Fontana albums like Cloudland. Thomas’ vocals get so strangled and wacky for a while it’s trying to sit through. It’s a nasty, bumpy gravel stretch for most of the rest of the running length, which I more or less have come to expect from the Ubu. Not without its merits, but a lesser segment of the projex.
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