Album: Pere Ubu

Anticipating a critical reaction to the title of their 19th album, Pere Ubu's singer David Thomas stresses it is "an irony-free recording", intended to represent an imagined novel by Jim Thompson, the bleak noir crime writer whose books plumb the amoral parts of the human psyche. Not even Thompson, however, came up with images such as "My eyes are growing tentacles for to grab you", as Thomas intones in "Love Song" over a waspish guitar riff. But for the most part, the noir notion affords Ubu the opportunity to return to the vivid musical topography of The Modern Dance and especially Dub Housing, with "Caroleen" careering along obsessively, and tracks such as "Babylonian Warehouses" and "Blue Velvet" offering dark, desolate but intriguing emotional landscapes. The latter song is a remarkable piece of sympathetic improvisation, featuring some beautiful blues-harp from Jack Kidney, and Thomas's haunting retreat into a place where "The sun does not warm me/The clean rain does not fall".

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Blue Velvet', 'Babylonian Warehouses', 'Caroleen', 'Love Song'