The only permanent member of Giant Sand, active since 1981, is singer / songwriter Howe Gelb. This eccentric from Tucson, Arizona hardly seems to care about a stable career and mainly makes records for a select, worldwide audience that adores him. A true cult artist with his own sound in which country, folk and other American roots music could already be heard before the title americana was invented
… for this. For proVisions he traveled to Denmark and Canada, among others, to work here with peers such as Neko Case, M. Ward and Isobel Campbell. This resulted in a record with a loose and casual atmosphere. But it never gets really cozy in this collection of haunted and melancholic songs. In Gelb's lyrics irony often reigns in a playful way. This calls, especially in a pure country song like Can Do, comparisons with Lee Hazlewood, with which Gelb also has a sometimes unearthly low voice in common. The poignantly beautiful ballad The Desperate Kingdom Of Love shows that Gelb is one of the most underrated songwriters in America. But his fans will be the last to worry about that. (MR)more