Giant Sand: proVISIONS

The four-year gap between Giant Sand's Is All

Over The Map

and the new proVISIONS suggests that Howe Gelb may be slowing down after rounding

the half-century mark. He's spent more than half his years making grungy,

brooding country, and he's got no reason to change things up now: Not too many

people still make (or get recording contracts for) this kind of grumbling,

atmospheric bar-blues, the kind played in the smoky, solo-bourbon-drinkin'

corners of the Southwest's seedy underbelly—so the niche needs Gelb to

continue carrying the torch. And proVISIONS isn't exactly more of the

same; perhaps aging has had a somber effect, as these sparse songs are more

isolated and lonely than Gelb's prior work. His characters rustle through the

fringes of society, skirting between sorry and sinister, often against

suggestions of an ominous political backdrop (especially on "Pitch & Sway"

and "Spiral"). This context of simmering societal turmoil makes his subjects

seem like scurrying rats at the approach of oncoming apocalypse, creating a

creeping foreboding that permeates. An assortment of contributors both adds to

the tension (Neko Case sings on the echoing "Without A Word") and detracts from

it (M. Ward only makes the trucker tune "Can Do" even more of a non-fit on the

record), but proVISIONS is an older Gelb at his gloomiest.