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Album
Gelb, Howe
The Coincidentalist
(New West Records)

Price: 149 SEK

Desert-folk iconoclast (SPIN) and Giant Sand visionary Howe Gelb has returned with The Coincidentalist, a transfixing collection of songs steeped in the dusty and discerning Americana he first began experimenting with more than 30 years ago. It will be released November 5 on his new label home New West Records.

Produced and recorded by Gelb largely in his home base of Tucson, at Wavelab studio and Harvey Moltz’s studio, his latest solo album is somewhere between his 40h and 50th release, but characteristic to Gelb’s quizzical self he doesn’t know exactly; he thinks it’s bad luck to know. Superstitions aside, the record, self produced by Gelb and mixed by John Parish, is his strongest in years and culminates three decades of freewheeling and forward-thinking music making either as Howe Gelb, Giant Sand, its larger incarnation Giant Giant Sand or under the guise of The Band... of Blacky Ranchette, Arizona Amp & Alternator, ‘Sno Angel and OP8.

For The Coincidentalist, the shape-shifting, ever evolving Gelb mines from his vast sonic playbook and melds desert-folk, alt-country, indie rock, jazz and experimental into a style he lovingly refers to as “erosion rock.”

Gelb is the principle vocalist and also plays guitar, piano and chimes and is joined on the album by an ensemble cast of musicians featuring M. Ward on guitar, former Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and Giant Sand bassist and all around Gelb cohort Thøger Tetens Lund. Scottish singer KT Tunstall (whose most recent album Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon was co-produced by Gelb), Will Oldham, violinist Andrew Bird, and pedal steel guitarist
John Rauhouse lend their talents to a variety of songs on the LP.

As for what or who exactly The Coincidentalist is, Gelb explains: “The Coincidentalist is someone who can read the coincidences but who doesn’t try to figure out their meaning. For if one tries to figure out the meaning it will be lost. The coincidences aren’t there to figure out but to point the way.”

Anchored by his unmistakable voice, a mix of gruff journeyman and sing-talk shaman, The Coincidentalist is a set of songs stitched together like a novel but which stand on their own. Opener “Vortexas” is rife with Gelb’s trademark humor and turn of phrase as he trades verses with Bonnie Prince Billy about his beloved Tucson over sparse Rhodes chords, jazzy upright bass and shuffling drums. “The 3 Deaths of Lucky,” a beautiful duet with KT Tunstall, plays out like a cinematic tale of fateful romance while “Unforgiveable” is a spirited romp that begins with jaunty piano, phasered guitars and child-like backing vocals and builds to a rollicking, effects-laden crescendo. “An Extended Plane of Existence” features a tranquil Spanish flamenco intro and outro and “Picacho Peak” sees Gelb delivering some of his most heartrending and clever lyrics: “I haven’t flown in my dreams since I was at least eleven/ So now I sleep when I fly/ Just to get even” he nearly whispers over plodding piano and angelic female vocals,” later adding: “When I was a child/ My daddy taught me how to steer with my knee/ Since he left this world it hasn’t felt right/ All the endless hours appear so finite.”

Called “the scruffy master of alt-country eclecticism” by NPR, Gelb has been making music since 1980 and has a long run of indefinable and influential recordings ranging from punk and roots-rock to psych, jazz, gospel and even traditional Spanish music. Since his early lo-fi envelope-pushing recordings with renowned slide guitarist
Rainer Ptacek as Giant Sandworms, Gelb has remained one of the most inventive and unique American musicians of the last three decades and has created a body of work that The Guardian UK hailed as “equal parts dazzling, intriguing, beautiful, maddening, musical and perverse.” Aside from a devoted following, he is beloved by his fellow musicians; songwriters like Neko Case, PJ Harvey, Richard Buckner, Vic Chesnutt, John Parish and Scott Niblett have all been on his records, and he has played on a ton of others. His band Giant Sand, which included Joey Burns and John Convertino in the ‘90s,spawned the acclaimed Latinesque unit Calexico. And if bestowing the world his own sun warped music wasn’t enough, he also discovered M. Ward and Grandaddy; he released the former’s debut on his own label and got the latter signed.

Always the traveling man, Gelb will return to Europe in October to play his new songs at a handful of dates with bassist Lund in Portugal and in Belgium in November as Giant Giant Sand in November.

As Gelb enters the next phase of his impressive career, The Coincidentalistsees him doing what he does best and offers a perfect opportunity to get reacquainted with him or for first time listeners to experience the wonderful world of Howe Gelb.

1. Vortexas
2. Left Of Center
3. Running Behind
4. The 3 Deaths Of Lucky
5. Unforgivable
6. The Coincidentalist
7. Triangulate
8. Picacho Peak
9. An Extended Plane Of Existence
10. Looking That Way
11. Instigated Chimes

Other albums by Gelb, Howe: