20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo

20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo's glimpses at life's unknowability are disturbing, affecting, and always fascinating--and prove that Pere Ubu are as vital as ever in the 2010s.

20 Years sounds like it was a blast to make. The playful side of the band, which often gets scant notice, is on full display. [No. 147, p.55]

[“Monkey Bizness” is] the most animated Ubu has been in ages, with an atmosphere of vertiginous dark energy accreting around the jagged guitar riff of “Red Eyed Blues”, while even the slower, more subdued melancholia of “The Healer” wields a strangely sinister poignancy as a desolate Thomas regretfully confesses, “I see too much”. But what visions!

The second half of the album mixes up longer, quieter intervals of unreality (“The Healer,” “Walking Again” “I Can Still See”) with more bangers (“Swampland” “Red Eyes”), and packs less of a wallop than the onset. Yet there is no question that 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo is more like Ubu’s earliest material than anything Thomas has put out in years

20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo sits comfortably at the Pere Ubu table as the main course of an illustrious career. Gorge yourself.

20 Years to new listeners to Pere Ubu's sound should not begin here; however, if they do, they should embrace the experience and imagine a time when it wasn't a crime for musicians to risk everything--life and limb--to push humanity past religious, governmental, and societal conventions, creating new ways to think, feel, and act.

Pere Ubu's punchiest effort since 1998's Pennsylvania. [Nov 2016, p.35]

The short duration of the tracks, about three minutes on average, and the fantastic guitar performances enhance the experience, enriching the various twists and turns Pere Ubu travels.

Thomas might have this new album down as the James Gang teaming up with Tangerine Dream, but PU exist in a world their own, one that bears only passing resemblance to reality.