Arizona Amp And Alternator - Arizona Amp And Alternator - 2005

Howe Gelb Biography: It took singer/songwriter Howe Gelb nearly 20 years to receive the type of attention upstart indie rockers routinely obtain by their second album. During those two decades, Gelb released an abundance of material at the helm of his group, Giant Sand, presenting a highly original take on Southwestern roots and garage rock. Gelb rarely stepped off his wayward musical course and onto even ground for any length of time. Combining this with inadequate promotion and distribution from a number of independent labels, and Gelb was ensured regrettable obscurity. By the late '90s, however, people finally began to take notice of a group of musicians gathering in Tucson, AZ. Gelb and Giant Sand had spawned a number of side projects including OP8 (Giant Sand plus Lisa Germano), Calexico, and the Friends of Dean Martinez. Gelb received the biggest critical and commercial success of his career with his Chore of Enchantment album in 2000. Howe Gelb formed the first incarnation of Giant Sand (then, the Giant Sandworms) in 1980 with longtime friend Rainer Ptacek. Like most of the early lineups, however, the group didn't last long, undergoing the first of many personnel changes. In 1985, Gelb took a new quartet (which included future Friends of Dean Martinez drummer Tom Larkin) into the studio to record Valley of Rain (the official debut as Giant Sand) for $400. More members came and went until 1988, when Gelb had settled briefly on a trio of bassist Paula Brown (his first wife who had joined in 1987) and drummer John Convertino. While Gelb and Brown would part ways in 1989, Convertino would eventually make up one third of Giant Sand's most consistent lineup. The final ingredient came in 1991 with the addition of Joey Burns. This core group recorded Ramp (1991), Center of the Universe (1992), Purge & Slouch (1993), and Glum (1994), albums that alternated pulsating rock with dusty acoustic etchings. In the years that followed, the story of Giant Sand's extended family grew increasingly complex. Convertino and Burns launched their duo project Calexico and co-founded the Friends of Dean Martinez. Gelb laid relatively low, releasing live and outtake material on Goods and Services, Backyard Barbecue Broadcast, and Volume 1: Official Bootleg Series (all 1995). He lent piano and organ to the Friends' debut (The Shadow of Your Smile, 1995) and joined an exceptional cast for contributions to Richard Buckner's stunning Devotion + Doubt album (1997). In 1998, V2 released Gelb's formal solo debut, the ethereal, lo-fi home studio project Hisser. In 1997, Gelb lost his close friend Ptacek to cancer, months before he was preparing to record the next Giant Sand album. The event threw him into an emotional tailspin. Initial Tucson sessions (at the same studio where he had worked with Ptacek just weeks previously) were largely unsuccessful. Three producers (John Parish, Jim Dickinson, and Kevin Salem) later, Gelb emerged with Chore of Enchantment, only to have the album rejected by V2. Chicago's Thrill Jockey ended up releasing what, against all odds, was one of Gelb's most cohesive collections. Chore drew from the broadest palette yet. Gelb stretched from the laid-back grooves of "X-tra Wide" to the escalating rock of "Satellite" with ease. He seemed less reliant on Giant Sand as an outlet than ever before. Near the end of the '90s, he launched his own Ow Om label. The Internet/mail-order imprint released discs from Gelb's Official Bootleg Series. Gelb spent a great deal of 2000 touring, orchestrating an increasingly spontaneous live show. A set list-free performance, a walkman playing snippets of previous shows, and a looping device (with 82 percent accuracy) were all used to supplement his extensive catalog of songs. More and more, both his live and studio performances began incorporating chance elements like these. At the start of the new millennium, the singer seemed busier than ever, working on a series of releases including a collection of solo piano instrumentals and a new album for Thrill Jockey. The latter project, designed as the follow-up to the intimate Hisser, was issued in early 2001 under the title Confluence, and displayed a sound closer to Giant Sand than any of Gelb's previous solo outings. Lull, a collection of piano pieces, appeared that same year. Gelb returned in 2003 with the similarly muted Listener album, and released Arizona Amp and Alternator in 2005. The latter included collaborations from M. Ward and Scout Niblett. Sno Angel Like You arrived in March 2006. ~ Nathan Bush, All Music Guide

Product Description: Howe Gelb's 2005 effort with Arizona Amp and Alternator ambles out of his mind like usual, kicking dust from its denim verses and finding side doors into moments that open into spacious desert ballrooms. The drums drop in late on opener "Velvet and Pearl," and tick along like a rusty generator; Gelb's vocal is on top of the microphone, blowing into it, but his "Little late to find out you meant all the world" lyric is perfectly, haphazardly heartbreaking. The atmosphere grows with "Where the Wind Turns the Skin to Leather," while their cover of the Traffic gem "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" (with Grandaddy in support) plays it only sort of straight – like a desert motel that only cleans the top sheet, there's dirt and cynicism in its hollows. Of course these are the places Gelb has always inhabited, whether in his own material or the expanses of Giant Sand, so Arizona Amp and Alternator's brushed acoustic guitars, stretches of squelch, and shuffled vocals will sound familiar to his devotees. Yeah, familiar like the worn brass rail of a tavern. Gelb has so many songs and stories stuck in his brain, Arizona Amp is just the latest crumpled brilliant letter from Americana's unofficial poet laureate. His All Over the Map collaborator Henriette Sennenvaldt returns on the eerie "Man on a String" – over the song's rickety piano, her flat phrasing and mournful keen actually suggest Will Oldham – and Marie Lorette Friis appears for the duet "Baby It's Cold Outside," where Gelb smacks his lips like a lecherous Tom Waits and changes the mercury of the original (but not the title) to match the Southwest's heat. Like so much of Gelb's work, there's the sense with Arizona Amp that you're seeing every five scenes of a film. "Vows" is full of hope – "Let's fill the nest with an egg or two" – but "Can Do Girl" boils in reverb and claustrophobic memory while the Neil Young-ish elegy "Bottom of the Barrel" (again with Grandaddy) is a cosmic mystery spot that isn't on any map. Arizona Amp and Alternator also features four versions of its title track, each tweaking the lyrics and arrangement to shift the meaning from touching autobiography, to rambling honky tonk duet, to tall tales told around the popping embers of a blue campfire. Listen. ~ Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide

Review: According to prominent hip-hop sources, the rap game can bear eerie similarities to the crack game. To hear Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb tell it in the four-part title cut to Arizona Amp and Alternator, making diffident y’allternative is a bit more like fixing cars. Who could get away with this? Howe Gelb, that's who. He's the motherfucking Chris Isaak of country. So cool, he's about to dissolve. Utter the two-fer "dry heat" in Arizona during the summer and you risk an assault. If Gelb’s fanbase were as heavily populated, the phrase "dry cool" might be equally dicey.With its rickety Southwestern-style arrangements, earth-toned melodies and Gelb’s croak of a voice, the Sand’s music is an obvious draw for those who consider Will Oldham grandiose. As with Oldham’s, Gelb’s songs can be rich indeed; it’s a shame Johnny Cash didn’t live to take any on. Too often, his most powerful work is buried beneath blasé tude and esoteric, Mascis-ish doofus humor. The liners on Arizona Amp and Alternator certainly warn off established doubters: "This band has no members," they say. "No membership is loud anymore." But if you didn’t tell Gelb to get off your phone years ago, have a look inside. He’s got an ace-in-the-hole this time named Scout Niblett, a British belter with more American soul than a Baptist tent revival. If Gelb didn’t have to thank Too Pure records for their "permission" to let Niblett join his memberless supergroup (which also numbers M. Ward, John Parish, Jason Lytle and other indie-class dwarf stars), you wouldn’t know. Leave it to Gelb to downplay his songwriting’s most polished showcase to date.

AAAA starts out cool, son… real cool. An off-kilter reading of Traffic’s cryptic "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" lets us know who’s running this. Immediately afterward, Henriette Sennenvaldt (of the Danish band Under Byen) sings "Man On a String" and picks away the icy scab over Gelb’s lyrical pain, and we’re reminded there’s nothing cooler than letting an emotionally volatile colleague steal the show once in awhile.

The backing vox on the first-chill-of-autumn ballad "Blue Blue Marble Girl" (wait for the "red cat boy" to appear) grease the wheels for the glorious hipster hymn "Loretta and the Insect World," which might be about a woman’s post-breakup degeneration but is definitely about the best thing that’s missing from every overrated Neko Case album. In between, there’s a cover of "Baby It’s Cold Outside" that, like Gelb himself, is too cool to be campy.

When he takes point, Gelb is as frustratingly elliptical as ever. "Can Do Girl" shoots the same eyes-averted nod to a solid romance that "The Leaving You" lends an obviously agonizing breakup. That’s Howe. I’m glad we’ve got him. And as of this disc, I’m convinced I’m not saying that simply to convince myself I’m cool enough to hang. ~ Emerson Dameron