Giant Sand – “Blurry Blue Mountain” (Fire) (rating 8 out 10)
It’s hard to believe that 25 years have passed since the release of “Valley of Rain,” the first Giant Sand album. And it’s nearly as long since the late ’80s follow-ups (“Ballad of a Thin Line Man,” “Storm,” and “The Love Songs”) that helped to form a template for what the alt. country scene of the ’90s and ’00s could be. Much as Howe Gelb has been keen to unburden himself of any such “godfather” role, there is no denying that the cross-pollination of country styles with punk, psychedelic rock, jazz, sunbaked acid blues, and more that “defined” alt. country could be traced back in one form or another to Gelb’s work with Giant Sand and, before that, Giant Sandworms.
“Blurry Blue Mountain,” like many of Gelb’s solo and band recordings, presents newly written material alongside reinventions of work from his back catalog. The Giant Sand of “Blurry Blue Mountain” is a six-piece group that includes the Danish musicians who appeared on 2008′s “proVISIONS” (Thger Lund, Peter Dombernowsky, Anders Pedersen, and Nikolaj Heyman), plus Phoenix-based singer Lonna Kelley. It was recorded in Denmark, where Gelb spends part of the year, with Kelley’s vocals added in Arizona. Place is important to Giant Sand and, like many of the group’s albums, this one comes with a cover that connects to its titular geographical reference. It’s an unpopulated place, as much a product of imagination as physical geography. On his website, Gelb describes it as “a broad landscape that has seldom been loitered in” and that the recordings convey a “space between the waking world and the sleeping one.”
This blurriness is echoed in the dreamy, meandering narratives of Gelb’s songs. The soundworld of the album is one of warmth and intimacy, Gelb’s voice a whisper in the ear, the bass and percussion a persistent but comforting presence. Occasional shards of electric guitar pierce the haze but, like lightning in mist, do not dispel it. Some of the most piercing (and beautiful) guitar lines appear on “Monk’s Mountain”, a song that speaks of freezes and thaws, of whispering pines. Slowly, it dawns that the Monk of the title is Thelonius, and that the song’s about leaving the country for the icy cool of the city. The countryesque simplicity of many of these songs only asserts Gelb’s standing as an alternative to mainstream country music, whether he likes the position or not. It’s understandable that he would not want to be seen as a standard bearer for a genre (perhaps a non-genre) as slippery and transient as alt. country (“whatever that is”, as “No Depression” used to say) when his own work has a history and a consistency that has outlasted any such label. But, for strategic purposes, it would be as well for those who still wish to suggest the progressive possibilities of country to have work of this quality in their arsenal. Here’s to the next 25 years. – Richard Elliott