What was to be Pere Ubu’s last album, and would be Tom Herman’s last until the mid-90s, and originally titled Goodbye, it was New Picnic Time that superficially turned the collective frown upside down of the band. “The Fabulous Sequel” (a.k.a. “Have Shoes Will Walk”) is the begins a new dance that is more energetic than anything found on Dub Housing and more dada than anything found on The Modern Dance. The guitar on “The Fabulous Sequel” does its best to hold on to any sense of the band’s garage rock roots but in the most abstract way, jumping around like a butterfly and managing a rockish solo to whistles and David Thomas’s playful and fluttering vocals. “49 Guitars & One Girl” every instrument is played in fragments broken and glued back together backing the funny sounds of Ravenstine’s sounds Thomas’s vocals. “A Small Dark Cloud” and “All the Dogs Were Barking” continue the avant-garage from Dub Housing's “Blow Daddy-O”. “Small Was Fast” plays pop rock with a grotesque troll at the bridge between creation and reception. “Make Hay” is daily life set to a relaxed jam.
“Goodbye”, “The Voice of Sand”, and “Kingdom Come” is the mini 10 minute masterpiece within a masterpiece. “Goodbye” takes the “lengthy” avant-garage instrumentals from Ubu’s first two albums and recalibrates them for a personal apocalypse with a revolving guitar and bass that never solves itself; another nervous wandering synth line from Ravenstine that isn’t strong enough to take off and not weak enough to die. Thomas restrains his vocals infusing greater fears of the modern world by not being loud and crazy as he was in the previous 20+ minutes. “The Voice of Sand” perfects Ubu’s tensions of searching for a place in the world as the voice of sand echoes the indeterminate future of man. “Kingdom Come” (a.k.a. “Jehovah’s Kingdom Come” and the greatest title of a song of all time: “Hand A Face A Feeling”) is a mini jam on The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”, though turned upside down and in the sarcastic style of Ubu, Thomas sings “A hand / A Face / A Feeling / I’m ready to face the world”, taking only what he needs, and all that he can really count on in the world, he and the band jam out “the best times of all” as the voice of sand whispers fatalism in the ears of civilization that thinks seashells sound neat and the waves from the view of the shore are pretty.
Tom Herman would leave and Red Krayola's Mayo Thompson would join for The Art of Walking, which would be even more abstract.
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