*** David Thomas and Foreigners

BAY CITY

(Thirsty Ear)

David Thomas, you know: he's the Jehovah's Sasquatch who's led Pere Ubu through three decades of art-punk ("avant-garage," in his words) mischief. He's also kept up a parallel solo career, backed by impermanent ensembles from the Pedestrians to Two Pale Boys. Here, he joins forces with three Danish improvisers barely known stateside, all of them allied with the Copenhagen-based Skraep collective. Billing percussionist P.O. Jorgens, guitarist Jorgen Teller, and clarinettist/bassist Per Buhl Acs as "Foreigners" seems a little flip, especially as the disc was recorded in Denmark. But the name underscores the set's emphasis on the three-way collision of unmistakably American source material, the musicians' distorted interpretation thereof, and Thomas's ever-skewed voice and vision.

Bay City was Raymond Chandler's name for Southern California's capital of corruption in numerous stories, so it's no surprise to encounter noir tropes, from femmes fatales ("Charlotte") to road trips ("Salt"), though Thomas also glances at gospelized pleading ("White Room") and that old soul standby, the break-up song -- "I can't eat beans out of a can and keep the house tidy and neat if you go," he moans in "The Doorbell." Meanwhile, the Foreigners supply backdrops ranging from minimal ("Clouds of You") to multilayered ("15 Seconds"). The best moments set the familiar against the abstract: "Shaky Hands" alternates between rapid Roy Rogers clip-clop and spacious sections evoking Derek Bailey and Evan Parker at their most unfettered. A few repetitive pieces don't merit their length, and Bay City isn't nearly as ambitious as Thomas's recent theater piece and album, Mirror Man. But its canny deployment of time-tested stylistic signposts makes it one of his most user-friendly solo efforts.

-- Franklin Bruno