Giant Sand: "Increment of Love"

Howe Gelb calls himself “a lifer.” As the circus troupers of the golden age would’ve said, he’s “with it and for it.” A crackling muse exists at his core, and, as he puts it, he “simply tries to stay out of its way when it’s coming out.”

Gelb has used a revolving-door cast of hugely gifted, improvisational musicians in the Tucson, Arizona collective Giant Sand as his most consistent conduit for more than 25 years. In addition to the group’s 15-album catalog, he’s released numerous albums under his own name, as The Band of Blacky Ranchette, as Arizona Amp & Alternator, and with OP8, his project with Lisa Germano. He’s collaborated with Neko Case, Richard Buckner, and M. Ward, among many others. Giant Sand’s formidable roster of players has formed such celebrated bands as Calexico and The Friends of Dean Martinez.

The Giant Sand of 1985, on Valley of Rain, played hefty, lyrically intelligent alt-rock songs laced with the dusty scent of the Southwest. With myriad lineup changes, the death of longtime friend and collaborator Rainer Ptacek, and the passing of time, the desert has taken over. The Giant Sand of today makes music conjured out of the sun-cracked, two-lane highways and sleepy service stations of the American desert itself, thick with the acrid smoke of a recently snuffed campfire.
 

“After you hit the half-century mark, you make sure every album and every show is played like it might be your last. You make sure everything counts.”

Gelb slowly works away at an album, none too concerned about when it’s finished but aware of what it will feel like when he’s done. He often works two to three years ahead, recording songs as he sees fit, many made up on the spot at the recording studio with “nothing more than a handful of lyrics, thoughts, or chords.” When he’s amassed enough songs with the same overall flavor, he gathers them up, carefully arranges them, and puts them on record. There’s no good way to explain the process; it’s an instinct that has leeched itself into his gut.

ProVISIONS, released in September 2008 on Yep Roc Records, is the first Giant Sand album in four years. Though Is All Over the Map (2004) lived up to its name as a shambling mixed bag of sounds and experimental, stream-of-consciousness whims, proVISIONS picks up where the beautiful Chore of Enchantment left off in 2000. It’s a fluid, cinematic oasis that would feel equally as comfortable weaving in and out of a Sergio Leone western as it would creaking out of the speakers of a rusted pickup truck.

The songs here feel broken in; there’s plenty of room to get out and stretch your legs. With Case’s plaintive backing vocals and the cocktail-lounge shuffle of “Without a Word,” the slow-moving, introspective piano ballad “Desperate Kingdom of Love,” and the epic, shape-shifting, rhythmic punch of “The New Romance of Falling,” it’s clear that this is an album created by musicians’ musicians (“lifers”), who know how to read each other’s subtle gestures with unconscious ease.

“After you hit the half-century mark, you make sure every album and every show is played like it might be your last,” Gelb says. “You make sure everything counts.” That’s a lifer for you.

Mercury Rev: "Butterfly's Wing"

Mercury Rev has never played by the rules, opting instead for a philosophy in which the basic rules of reality and consciousness are meant to be questioned. This aversion to the basic definitions and limits of rock and roll certainly has hurt the band commercially but has also garnered it a loyal cult following. The band’s 1991 debut album, Yerself is Steam, established its members as immediate critical darlings, and in 1998, the band seemed on the verge of super-stardom with the release of Deserter’s Songs, its most commercially successful release to date.

Although widespread public recognition continued to elude the group, the album served as a rekindling of spirits for a collective that was on the verge of implosion due to debilitating drug addictions and long-standing internal squabbling. The album was also a reflection of a group of men desperate to find themselves personally and artistically.

In addition to getting clean, the band signed to a new label (V2), assembled a new touring band in support of Deserter’s Songs, and through spiritual peace of mind finally tamed the reckless energy that had threatened to tear the band apart. With the widespread acclaim of The Secret Migration in 2005 and the recent release of Snowflake Midnight, the band is operating at full speed with a globe-trotting tour and a renewed belief in its skewed, idiosyncratic vision.

“It was a natural progression for us,” Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak says from the band’s studio in upstate New York, as he describes Snowflake Midnight. “Things were changing within the band, so the elements that made up the album just kind of fell into place that way. After Migration, I had started to play with different computer programs, and we broke out our old synth equipment. We were having so much fun playing with this stuff that we just started recording. With us, it usually works that if someone gets a new gadget, it sort of sparks the whole process of writing songs and making music.”

On Snowflake Midnight, the band delved headfirst into the electronic and ambient influences that have always been a part of its sound but have come to define its aesthetic in the last 10 years. Monstrous guitar outbursts have largely been replaced by digital ambiance and programmed beats, though the sound is still distinctly Mercury Rev. “It wasn’t until the last 10 years that software finally caught up with the sounds we wanted to make,” Mackowiak says.

Themes of rebirth and transformation permeate much of Snowflake Midnight, with songs “Snowflake in a Hot World” and “A Squirrel and I (Holding on…and then Letting Go)” capturing the trademark psychedelia and group mentality of an aging band coming to terms with its mortality.

“I think that the album reflects on the band as a whole and on each of us personally,” Mackowiak says. “Being in the band all these years, we’ve seen a lot of changes internally and externally. We’ve seen the music industry change and ourselves change. My father and [drummer] Jeff Mercel’s father both passed away during the making of Snowflake. At my age, you tend to wake up and reevaluate your life and where you’re headed sometimes.
 

"The hippie movement definitely grew out of the Beats, but I think that we share the cynical, questioning spirit of the Beats, and not the New Age hippie philosophy of ‘Everything is great; let’s smoke a bowl.’”

“For the most part, we were in a positive head-space during the writing and recording of the album. The past eight years have been really tough on the country, and now with the economy, it’s been tough on everybody, and I think one of the ways out of these depressions is music. It’s like the writings of [William S.] Burroughs, whose big themes were time and physical travel, drugs, sex, and music breaking through the fabric of everyday reality — not as a statement but as a philosophical question about reality. I think our music is a lot like that, as we try to poke holes through reality and the idea of ‘What is the music industry and what is rock and roll?’”

As a companion piece to Snowflake Midnight, the band has released Strange Attractor, another full-length album, as a free download through the band’s website. “A lot of the songs with lyrics became Snowflake, which we worked on with [engineer] Dave Friedman,” Mackowiak says. “And then Strange Attractor was stuff that we would work on in between, so Attractor became this kind of alternate-universe album we were working on in between Snowflake.”

Despite being available for free and conceived as a project between Snowflake Midnight sessions, the album is a fully realized vision, with eleven tracks of trippy, late-night goodness.

“It’s an instrumental mood piece, really,” Mackowiak says. “Releasing it for free was our little rebellion against commercialism. The Beat writers are definite influences on us. I live near Woodstock, as does most of the band, and lately it seems like a lot of people label us a ‘hippie’ band, and I don’t know where that comes from. We’re not really New Age or anything. A lot of our influences come from the travel writings of [Jack] Kerouac or [Allen] Ginsberg and the sort of transformation of spirit through your own senses. We don’t really buy into the New Age kind of hippie movement. The hippie movement definitely grew out of the Beats, but I think that we share the cynical, questioning spirit of the Beats, and not the New Age hippie philosophy of ‘Everything is great; let’s smoke a bowl.’”

Although the band has never shied away from the exploration of altered perceptions, when co-founder/vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Donahue’s experimentation with heroin quickly spiraled into full-blown addiction, it caused the band to splinter in the mid-’90s, following the release of See You on the Other Side in 1995.

In 1997, Donahue and Mackowiak reconvened in the Catskill Mountains to begin work on Deserter’s Songs, utilizing the neighboring talent of Garth Hudson and Levon Helm from The Band, who appear on the album. Deserter’s Songs was an attempt to reconcile long-festering bitterness, and a chance to examine the disparate personal journeys of the past two years. It was also an opportunity to try on a stripped-down, rootsier approach to music and strip away the psychedelic gluttony that had begun to clutter the band’s sound.

“Before the album, Jonathan and I had a real tension going on, and people were screwed up on drugs,” Mackowiak says. “Attending a Jesuit monastery was the chance to take myself out of the equation for a month. It was a chance to have daily tasks, but not really think about anything and clear my mind. What I got out of it was taking a timeout from music and clearing my mind of all clutter. You’re supposed to be doing prayers while you’re there, which I didn’t do, but they were very loose and open to all kinds of spirituality. I wasn’t really practicing meditation, but the isolation and removal from society was enough meditation.”

Mercury Rev has seen its share of success and failure, highs and lows, and everything that comes now is viewed as a bonus.

“Our first album, Yerself Is Steam, starting doing really well in the press when it came out, so we had to get together and play a show, and we’d never really played live,” Mackowiak says. “It all started happening so fast, and our second gig ever was The Reading Festival in front of 20,000 people. One of our first gigs was opening for Bob Dylan. I was pretty freaked out. This was the Dylan period when he was wearing sweatshirts with the hood up, and I’m on stage playing and I look over and there’s Dylan hanging in the wings, kind of hunched over, wearing the hood, and I just totally lost it.

“But all that early success just makes me realize how lucky we are. We’ve always felt like outsiders, and I think it’s because what we bring to rock is not just rock and roll. Our interest in jazz, Delta blues, and electronic is all valid for us, and in our over-exuberance, we try to cram it all into what we think is rock and roll. I think sometimes it’s helped us and sometimes it’s hurt us, but it’s what we do. Everything that’s happened to us after age 30 has been a bonus, because we all thought we’d be dead by 30. Every album and every tour is a bonus.”

Powersolo

Released last week in their native Denmark, Bloodskinbones is the latest weird rock offering from brothers Kim Kix and Atomic Child.  Now a duo, Powersolo has an amorphous sound that resembles power pop, dirt rock, and rockabilly on any given song, often crossing into other genres such as mariachi.

The group's creations are always eccentric and often are raunchy, but this album might be its most straightforward, rock-fueled effort to date.  Stream the entire album at the group's website: www.powersolo.dk

Powersolo: "Pirates of the Oblivion"
Powersolo: \"Pirates of the Oblivion\"

Marissa Nadler: Little Hells (Kemado)

Dreamy songstress Marissa Nadler returns two years after her last release, Songs III: Bird on the Water, with an album that expands her style with indie-rock accompaniment, soft organ, guitar murmurs, and more.

Nadler's heavenly harmonies, however, shine brighter than the pretty, minor-key instrumentation. The featured song below doesn't particularly encapsulate the album, so listen to all of it here: kemado.com/little_hells_ecard

Marissa Nadler: "River of Dirt"
Marissa Nadler: \"River of Dirt\"

Harmonic 313: When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence (Warp)

The first full-length album from Australian producer Mark Pritchard as Harmonic 313, the latest of his aliases, is minimalist electro-dance and drum & bass that's light on the cheesy dance-floor sounds.

Pritchard continues evolving from his last full-length as Harmonic 33 (minus the "1"), the 2005 album Music for Film, Television & Radio, Vol. 1, which focused on electronic lounge creations.  This album definitely isn't for written for IDM beat heads, and though one could imagine a club of dudes getting grimy to it, When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence carries a level of sophistication that average dance discs do not.

His new website has some fun color-coded word problems, and if you beat all five levels, you get a free download of the unreleased track below.

Harmonic 313: "Problem 7"
Harmonic 313: \"Problem 7\"

The Soundtrack of Our Lives: Communion (Yep Roc)

With its first album in nearly four years, this Swedish psych-rock group issues two discs of poppy classic-rock anthems that frontman Ebbot Lundberg thinks are the band's best ever.  The group's psychedelic intros and undertones help it live up to its goal, which is, in Lundberg's words, to create a "musical entrance to another dimension."

Flourishes of harpsicord, zither, flute, organ, and tympani accent the rock lineup of this sextet, making a layered, involved batch of feel-good ballads.  If you enjoy this type of music, you won't be disappointed with Communion.

High on Fire

Relapse stoner-metal stars High on Fire are known for a pummeling live set. Live at the Contamination Fest chronicles the band's sonic aggression from the 2003 Relapse Contamination Festival, proving that speed picking, hard beats, and raspy growls don't go out of style in just five years.

In addition to seven originals, this album includes a cover of "Witching Hour" by English thrash-metal group Venom.

High on Fire: "Eyes and Teeth"
High on Fire: \"Eyes and Teeth\"

The Gourds: Haymaker! (Yep Roc)

Rootsy country quintet The Gourds returns with a follow-up from Noble Creatures, released just a year and a half earlier on Yep Roc. Haymaker! maintains the group's heterogeneous approach, throwing in splashes of zydeco, bluegrass, classic rock, and more.

The Gourds: "Fossil Contender"
The Gourds: \"Fossil Contender\"

Wroom: North of Forty-Five (Arena Rock Recording Co.) [LP + free CD]

Now available as a double-gatefold LP with a free CD, North of Forty-Five is the newest work from ambient duo Wroom. The album's material is a series of soft, sprawling numbers, often taking minutes just to establish a presence.

Once in gear, however, Wroom uses guitars, effects, and loops to create long-form beauty that is great for relaxation.

Chatham County Line: s/t (Yep Roc) [reissue]

Originally released in June of 2003, this self-titled debut from Chatham County Line gets a re-release via Yep Roc. The group's traditional bluegrass instrumentation has since expanded a bit with touches of slide guitar, but at their heart, these offerings are just the same — built on the modern crooning of singer/songwriter Dave Wilson.

Bad Brains: Build a Nation

With the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch on board as producer, these DC hardcore legends returned to the studio, for the first time in over a decade, to recapture their successful punk and reggae blend.

Reminiscent of their seminal early ‘80s records, Build A Nation opens with “Give Thanks and Praises,” which moves back and forth between head-banging and frantic hardcore riffs. “Jah People Make the World Go Round” keeps true to the original hardcore format (which they helped create) with fast verses — made more intimidating with Yauch’s bass-line production — and breakdown choruses. Several relaxed reggae tracks give the album a unique pacing.
Megaforce: www.megaforcerecords.com

Big Business: Here Come the Waterworks

After completing (A) Senile Animal with their other band, the Melvins, and finishing an exhaustive touring schedule including double sets every night, this Los Angeles duo released one of the year’s earliest masterpieces.

Taking cues from Queen, singer/bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis created a hard-rock epic. The journey begins with the tremendous “Just as the Day Was Dawning,” ends with the sludgey instrumental “Another Beautiful Day in the Pacific Northwest,” and pummels listeners with swampy, energetic bass riffs and explosive drum beats every step of the way.

Produced by Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Built to Spill), Here Come the Waterworks is a heavy hitter.
Hydra Head: www.hydrahead.com

Brother Ali: The Undisputed Truth

A powerfully crafted album, The Undisputed Truth is the year’s best hip-hop release. There were other solid efforts (I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead by El-P) and a plethora of great singles, but The Undisputed Truth deals with, in great balance, the three elements of angst-fueled music: righteous and rebellious lyrics, the inducement of fist pumping, hand throwing, and head banging, and enormous egos that carefully bob from insecure to forcefully inflated.

The album opens with a thumping beat on “Watcha Got,” and the opening lyrics “I came in the door, 1984” are likely to become this generation’s “bring the motherfucking ruckus” as rapped on Wu-Tang Clan’s “Bring Da Ruckus.”
Rhymesayers: www.rhymesayers.com

Exploding Star Orchestra: We Are All from Somewhere Else

The inaugural Exploding Star Orchestra album is the brainchild of Rob Mazurek, a tireless composer/cornetist/collaborator and the man behind Thrill Jockey’s Chicago Underground collective. With a stellar ensemble, his work on We Are All from Somewhere Else is a dense, serpentine concoction of cross-metered jazz.

Looping rhythms, typically played by upright bass, vibraphone, and brass or woodwind instruments, set the foundation for runs and improvisations by Mazurek and the other players on trombone, saxophone, flute, clarinet, and piano. At times, the album is evocative of composer Leonard Bernstein’s work. Its compounded melodies and droning roots make We Are All from Somewhere Else one of the year’s finest albums.
Thrill Jockey: www.thrilljockey.com

Grinderman: s/t

A side project for Nick Cave and Bad Seeds members Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos found the foursome embracing rock ’n’ roll at its rawest, resulting in an album akin to The Stooges or Cave’s The Birthday Party without being merely a revival act.

Whether crooning or screaming, even at age fifty, the sound of Cave’s voice is enough to inspire listeners to do naughty things with the one they love, or at least the one they lust. The snarling “No Pussy Blues,” with Ellis’ wild psychedelic guitar fills, is infectious and unforgettable.

Fun and intelligent rockers such as “Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” and “Depth Charge Ethel” are balanced by the more subdued “Man in the Moon” and silky “Electric Alice.” Hopefully, the success of Grinderman’s debut will lead to a follow-up in the not-so-distant future.
Anti: www.anti.com