Hisser

Howe Gelb | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 25, 1998)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: V2 / Wasabi
• ASIN: B000009O4S
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,439 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Temptation Of Egg

2. 4 Door Maverick

3. This Purple Child

4. Shy Of Bumfuck

5. Propulsion

6. Catapult

7. Creeper

8. Tanks Rolling Into Town

9. Halifax In A Hurricane

10. Living In A Waterfall

11. Like A Store Front Display

12. Explore You

13. Nico's Lil Opera

14. Thereminender

15. Hisser

16. Intro Speak

17. Soldier Of Fortune

18. Lull

19. Short Way To End The Day

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Ambient and lo-fi sounds, tape click and whir, gut-string scrapes, orchestrated loops of train moans, a voice just fallen from bed with terrible nicotine cravings, and the whole mix swallowed up in desert-cave reverb: Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb's solo project has a dark, elliptical charm, floating somewhere between Ennio Morricone and Beck's demo tapes. Gelb doesn't forget--usually--about melodic craft and even shiny lyrical hooks. "Shape of a woman / Temptation of egg," for instance, is inscrutable but memorable. The best material, however, makes the intentionally casual and slapdash moments seem like throwaways: Hisser would have profited from coherent editing and sequencing. Some songs come across as two-minute splices of cinéma vérité, remarkably vivid on "Four Door Maverick," a song about driving through storms and a kind of Southwest homage to Gelb's deceased friend Ranier Patchek. Gelb marries end-of-the-rope associations with brooding guitar and piano lines, and save a few excessively eccentric indulgences--the sophomoric, distorted vocal crisscrossing of the title track and other lapses into studio-effects goofery--the album is eerie and fascinating. --Roy Kasten

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Howe-fi, December 17, 1999

By 

Joachim Lyssens (Leuven, Belgium) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hisser (Audio CD)

This record was a lucky discovery to me in the second hand CD shop here. Howe Gelb's music can be compared with Will Oldham's, and that's a compliment. Just relax, smoke something and listen to this.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, March 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Hisser (Audio CD)

Howe is soooo sublime. We love him and his distant train sounds..

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars He went there alone, March 10, 2002

By 

Arise Therefore (Orange, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hisser (Audio CD)

Some people can take me with them into their self absorbed, depressed indulgences, having spent most of my twenties in that space myself (and occasionally still) However, Howe Gelbs' Hisser is too self indulgent and lacking in musical originality to allow me to do more than ask "Why, Howe?"