Customer Reviews

Is All Over the Map

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Some music resonates inside you the instant you hear it. It's the lovely, honest stuff that becomes a part of you at some crucial point in your life -- after a breakup or during a rite of passage -- and never leaves that little compartment that it forged in your soul. Or maybe the music hits you at the right time of day, breathing alongside whatever sunset, toe-pointing kiss or first cup of organic espresso makes you most receptive. And then you have music that fills your whole being with these feelings, even if you're sitting in your miserable cubicle for nine hours a day.

Howe Gelb's work does that.

In case you're unfamiliar with Gelb's work as Giant Sand (featuring previous collaborations with Neko Case, Victoria Williams, members of Grandaddy, Joey Burns and John Convertino, who went on to form Calexico), he has enjoyed a twenty year, twenty-seven release career, touring with everyone from the Cramps to PJ Harvey. Is All Over...the Map features a supergroup made up of legends such as John Parish on drums, mellotron and producing duties, newish guy Anders Pedersen on lap steel, guitar and "electric slide mandolin", and guest vocals by the likes of Vic Chesnutt. The ensemble creates a rich texture of elegant trash, conjuring images of tumbleweeds and ghost towns whose thousand stories are just waiting to be told -- that's Gelb's Tucson roots and home studio showing through. Drums clack and thump into vintage mics (enough to make Steve Albini blush); Gelb's 1888 piano shakes and creaks under the master's gentle hand (eerily sounding Henry Cowellesque on "Drab"); frets and strings buzz, and howling tube amp feedback rattles the studio windows like a passing ghost train.

The band's dynamic resembles the greats: Crazyhorse, classic Heartbreakers, vintage Eagles and The Flying Burrito Brothers ain't got nothin' on Giant Sand. Gelb and Pederson's guitar work often spices the folksy Americana/stoner California songs with doses of Kevin Shields and Hendrix at their noisiest, soothing the deal with Gelb's wife Sofie's innocent vocals (see "NYC of Time" and the Frenchtangoflamenco of "Les forcats innocents"). They work the gamut, from the heart-wrenching weeper "Classico" to a grizzled medley of "Anarchy in the UK" and Willie Nelson ("Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle"), with daughter Patsy Gelb swinging the Lydon side 'til dad laments, "Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Tolstoys". Ha!

However, as perfect a brew as this is, it's Gelb's voice and lyrics that push the music into otherworldly territories. His shaky timbre -- channelling Tom Waits, Lou Reed in his later days, Neil Young and Nick Drake -- has its way with you, whether it calms your nerves, sweeps over you with euphoric afterglow or simply reduces you to tears. "You find a girl, and she means all the world / and you lose your heart and it's back to the start / that's just the way it goes / when it's so...classico," Gelb offers. His voice is carefully restrained; he and the band are whispering to lure you in -- and once you're hooked, squealing feedback deadens your left ear ("Classico"). On "Crackling Water", he whispers his message into the wind (from his porch?), sounding desperate, spiteful, shamanic and prophetic as he pivots, comparing the "crackling water, crackling light and the cracking clouds, and the crackling night" to the strain of a rocky relationship. He plays the role of sensitive mountain man: "When the weather turns warm / and the wind's fully formed / I return with all the grey I've earned / and my heart not fully formed / I hate you now, this is not love." Bonus points for his use of the word "over-underestimate". Gelb's 47 years of tough living are exposed by his cautionary moral on "Miss", something we should all be taught at age five: "Paradise don't come without mistakes."

In an interview, Gelb once talked about purchasing the town of Rice, a deserted two-building shanty next to Joshua Tree that was going for a few grand. His idea was to name it Giant Sand, "Because bands are like little towns. You just gotta pick the spot where it feels right." This is a fitting metaphor for the group: Is All Over...the Map serves as the town hall, with Gelb and Parrish as mayor and deputy, respectively. Howe, if you're a little short on cash but you promise to continue your lovely art, I'll start the pledge drive with the first $100.

Previously I've felt unsure how to approach the various albums by Giant Sand. From what I've read, the harshest critique I can think of the band is that from record to record, the music is uneven, ranging from astonishingly good to just so-so and over-reaching. That's true for any band, and like Gelb sings in the song `Muss': paradise don't come without mistakes. My experience from the sandmen's `Chore of Enchantment' to `Is All Over the Map' has been nothing short of epic, or should I say.... Classico. To me, the progression of this record from `Chore' is no less solid, yet the pace of many of the songs is welcoming. `Chore' dealt with the dirtiness of the "ever-present", especially the pain associated with the loss of the band's co-founder, Rainer Ptacek. This album is the aftermath, the rising sun simmering in a clear sky. For the most part, this album is louder, faster, yet no less a catch. Album to album, Howe Gelb always seems to know how to infuse just the right amount of cool, humor, and emotion in combination with a talented group of contributors. That combination comes through in the music as a sound unclassifiable, simply because of all the styles mixed within. It's not just country, southwestern, nor is it jazz, internationally tinted (French and Latin/Caribbean), nor is it funk. I think this album epitomizes rock & roll because it destroys all boundaries. Whatever the genre, it's always an ongoing experiment, and it's clear that the Sandmen have fun defining it. It truly is all over the map. Rather than a hazy evening, to me the feel of this album is as a sunrise, promising the simmer of summer, which as the Sandmen would say, has a similar hold on me. Great album.

The answer to my little review's title rhetoricals are with Giant Sand's album, "Is All Over the Map," Howe Gelb's sand can be pretty big when he wants it to be. And as for sand on your map? Well, I suppose that all depends on what type of material your map is made from? If its one of the wacky survival maps made of untearable material and designed to be submerged in water, I'd say the chances are pretty good Giant Sand particles would brush right off. However, if you have one of those new-fangled two-sided tape laminated maps that are coming out right now in REI's across the country I'd say if you are doing a beach hiking excursion you are pretty much stuck -- stuck with sand stuck to your map. But that just may be me.

So right about now, if you are still reading this, you may be asking yourself, "Self, What in name of the holy tar of God's Green hills does this review have to do with the price of coffee beans in a Beijing Starbuck's?" Well, I'd respond to you by saying, that's certainly an odd question to be asking of an Amazon reviewer writing about Howe Gelbe's Giant Sand's 2004 offering "Is All Over the Map," but hey, whatever freaks your peak my friend, whatever freaks your peak.

So I'm heading to this Giant Sand - Neko Case concert next month and thought I'd need to do some research. Since I'm intimately familiar with Case's work (and I love those red locks of hers and that Patsy Cline vocal style Fox Confessor Brings the Flood), Giant Sand, I'd never heard of. So my research started right here on Amazon's lovely on-line shopping extravaganza of a website with Giant Sand Is freakin' really all over the map, the research results you very well may ask?

If I had to pigeon-hole the Sand sound, I'd say its most akin to The Silver Jews Starlite Walker. That indie-hipster songwriter cred quasi-alt country is all there in the Sand's work. There's some similarities to Calexico as well Garden Ruin. Now what about the music? I'd say somebody shoulda handing out an award to Gelb in 2004 for the single best song title in track 14, "Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle." It's the 2004's answer to the Sex Pistol's Anarchy in the UK...expect this time around Howe Gelb has apparantley taken a hit on some sort of illicit drugs or another and written and performed this song to all of the 17 people that have listened to it over the years. I believe Gelb's own daughter Patsy, named after Patsy Cline mind you, does a Lydon-esque vocals turn on this track. Best line, "Mamma, don't let your babies grow up to be Tolstoys," which when you really look at it is some darn fine advice considered what happened to the young Leo in Moscow when he got into serious gambling debts that forced him to reconsider his life and become a Christian anarchist and a darn fine memorable writer to boot. So, I don't know where that leaves us really on Gelb's lyrical Tolstoyian advice?

Back to the music my friend, there's a number titled "NYC in Time," which is really all over the map. At first it reminded me of the Silver Jews' paen to the city of Dallas but only this time the music is performed by Giant Sand and pays homage to New York City...the big city, the real American city. The song morphs halfway through and becomes this terrific lyrically word play with the chorus becoming, "In the nick of time,"...that's a very nice Mr. Gelb.

What else to do you have on this album? You've got "Flying Around the Sun at Remarkable Speed," every bit a deserved bonified college radio hit if there ever was one and my friend there have been a few underground indie hugely popular for the mass audience hits in the history of music. Then you have this French spin-off loungey kind of number, "Les Forcats Innocents," which to the best of my knowledge is actually sung in another language. I have translated the lyrics and the title I believe means, "I once had four cats whom on the surface looked pretty innocent but when it really came down to it were psycho crazy hose-beasts like their wild counterparts and were silently plotting together how to rip my eyes out and shred my SpongeBob PJ's while I slept." The title aside, the rest of the song translates to pretty much of the same thematic themes.

Now I'm fired up to go to the concert in the land of big D and am almost as excited about seeing the Giant Sand of love and leisure as I am about seeing Case. But then there's that beautiful red hair and those golden retro pipes. Get this CD my friend...it's all over the map, yes, but it should be on you map or at least your radar range. ...mmw

I've heard a lot of Howie Gelb so this album is my introduction to Giant Sand. First off, this ain't country, but more of an amalgam of Lou Reed (vocals) and Tom Waits without the histrionics (Muss) and maybe a touch of Greg Brown (Fool of a Girl). I do love the open space melancholy that pervades most of these songs and the low key singing style adds to all of this. This album is certainly eclectic, as the title states, but I'm not sure it serves the album as a whole. Maybe I picked the wrong album to start with.

Howie Gelb is one of the more under-known of American guitarists and songwriters. In recent years he's really managed to weave his whimsy and dead-seriousness into a very distinct rattlesnake-in-the-desert-sun Southwest moody sound, and it works. That said, his previous cd, OP8, is one of his best, a crowning achievement, and this cd includes a few tracks from that collaboration re-arranged. Except for intellectual curiosity, even a fan like me must acknowledge they aren't as good as the same tracks on OP8. Just don't expect them to be better. If you like Howie Gelb, and don't own OP8, you're missing out.