If you're a recent convert to what has been dubbed the New Weird America, permit me to fill you in: Howe Gelb's been living here for years. Both as a prolific solo artist and with his long-running combo Giant Sand, Gelb has created a fascinating and meandering series of footprints across the landscape. His work has never acknowledged any borders that might theoretically exist between mariachi waltzes, psychedelic guitar rock, uptown piano jazz, or dusty improvised C&W; and without squinting much, one can easily discern reverberations of his travels in such freewheeling roots-conscious acts as Califone, Jackie-O Motherfucker or even in the more countrified moments of Sunburned Hand of the Man.
Giant Sand Is All Over the Map is roughly Giant Sand's 53rd album, give or take an authorized bootleg or five, but it's the group's first record of original material since 2000's elegiac Chore of Enchantment. (The entertaining but uneven cover album Cover Magazine appeared in 2002.) The album's title-- a phrase which has undoubtedly appeared in dozens of Giant Sand reviews over the years, maybe even including some written by me-- is here intended literally, as these songs were recorded at various locations around the globe with the assistance of one-time PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish.
The biggest and most obvious change here is the departure of the group's longtime rhythm section of bassist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, who have left to focus on their work as Calexico. One can't help but notice the loss of two such subtle and dexterous instrumentalists, but Gelb takes their absence in full stride. I can't say for certain whether or not it's due to the exit of his former bandmates, but something has certainly got him all riled up here. Throughout the album, he sounds as ornery as javelina in an undersized cage, and the result is some of the rowdiest Giant Sand music since the near-grunge of 1992's Center of the Universe.
The opening acoustic shuffle "Classico" sounds restrained enough until suddenly Gelb kicks his boots up on the piano and lets fly an electric guitar solo that sounds like miles of abandoned telegraph wire getting shredded by a twister. This apparently puts the taste of blood in his mouth, because he then proceeds to lead the (predominantly European) ensemble through some of Giant Sand's most satisfying Crazy Horse-derived rockers ever, in the form of "NYC of Time", "Flying Around the Sun at Remarkable Speed" and "Remote", which features bone-rattling back-up yowls from Scout Niblett. The record even includes an appropriately chaotic take on "Anarchy in the U.K." (here titled "Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle") with charmingly imperfect vocals supplied by Gelb's daughter.
However, it wouldn't be much of a Giant Sand album if they just stuck to the main road, and as usual, they don't. Side trips here include the cowboy poker parlor instrumental "Rag", the Latin-tinged bolero of "Napoli" and the sardonic narrative of "Hood (View from a Heidelberg Hotel)" which finds Gelb wittily tormenting the maids of a hotel who "mostly can't pronounce its name." (You've also got to wonder whether he's addressing Calexico on this track when he sings, "The way I'm feeling about the brotherhood/ Has me feeling down and up/ To no good.")
Some of these digressions occasionally cross the line and simply become irritants, particularly if you're someone who wishes that Gelb could just once give us a linear trail to follow. But Giant Sand has always been about the journey rather than the destination, and I for one am certainly not going to begrudge Gelb his ambition to spread his distinctive style of American weirdness worldwide.
