"When something ain't broke around here, we don't fix it," Howe Gelb sings on "AAAA (1)", giving the unofficial slogan for the fictitious Arizona Amp and Alternator, his new, possibly one-off moniker and the concept behind this self-titled album. The prolific Gelb has been doing similar and similarly tossed-off records like this for years, both as a solo artist and with the band Giant Sand. This new project is more conceptual than his usual m.o. and occasionally the mechanic's garage motif seems intrusive, especially on the four "AAAA" songs, which may have something to do with being blue in a red state. Regardless, Arizona Amp and Alternator on the whole captures the pace of a hot afternoon spent lounging in the shade, spouting lawn-chair philosophy over arid desert folk and waiting for the next stranded driver with a stalled automobile.
Gelb does get a few customers: Grandaddy backs him on three songs, M. Ward stops by briefly for a dusty sing-along, and Jeremy Gara of the Arcade Fire drums on one track. Several female singers drop by for duets, including previous collaborator Henriette Sennenvaldt, and Danish singer Marie Lorette Friis keeps a straight face playing European ingénue to Gelb's desert stalker during a jokey cover of Frank Loesser's "Baby It's Cold Outside". Scout Niblett makes a predictably weird spoken-word cameo on "Recital", but it's ace mechanic Marie Frank who steals the show. She subtly and beautifully tunes up Gelb's rough-edged vocals on "Where the Wind Turns the Skin to Leather" and "Loretta and the Insect World". That song, with its boy-girl back-and-forth, sounds like Lee Hazlewood on a heat-induced fever dream, especially when it hits the rococo girl-group chorus and Frank revels in an earthy lust born of broken love.
But Gelb is still boss, and Arizona Amp and Alternator is a predictably shaggy-dog album. As usual he's never in any hurry, and often goes off on wild tangents that occasionally lead nowhere in particular. But that addled esoterica is part of Gelb's appeal: To get to moments like the atmospheric guitar outro to "Where the Wind Turns the Skin to Leather" and the chorus to "Loretta and the Insect World"-- which catch you off guard with their simple, streamlined elegance-- you have to wade through discursive moments like the four "AAAA" tracks and the plodding cover of Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys". For all its frustrations, this approach has suited Gelb well for more than two decades. As the man himself would say, if it ain't broke...
