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 Howe Gelb Strikes Again! By Fred Mills
HOWE GELB
Hisser
WHEN I TOLD a friend, who is definitely not a Giant Sand fan, that I was gonna give Gelb's solo rec the ol' four-star "classic" award, he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "Giant Sand's dense enough," he claimed, "and Hisser is just about impenetrable." "Caliche rock," I shot bayself, hmm, I got a hook. On the surface, the record is deceptively frugal, a moderately lo-fi, stylistically open-minded ramble through Mr. Gelb's neighborhood (it was recorded in the front room of his barrio digs) with lots of familiar faces waving at you from the other side of their hedges: Winston, Paula Jean, Joey, John, Sofie, Patsy...hey, there's Lisa Germano!
Interestingly, included with this disc's promotional notes are
some hand-scrawled comments from Gelb in which he relates enduring
a monster Pennsylvania flood back in '72. He eventually wound
up in Tucson--"a good place to avoid another flood,"
quips Gelb. A quarter-century later, the emotional floodwaters
rose with equal devastation as he helplessly watched his best
friend Rainer be swept away by cancer. I don't think this record
is to be taken as a chronicle of that point in time; I hear it
more as a part-memorial, part-exorcism. Intensely personal (especially
in the lyric department) and at times harrowing, but absolutely
life-affirming, Hisser is one of those rare, bare-bones
works of art that demands of the listener--as it did of its creator--that
you surrender to the muse and to the moment.
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But as my friend suggested, it's not an "easy" listen
in the traditional sense. Exactly why I like it. Dig a few feet
below the surface and you may find yourself needing a good pick,
chipping away at little fragments like the 1-1/2 minute piano
noodler "Living On A Waterfall" or a creepy theremin-and-guitar
experiment appropriately titled "Thereminender." But
hang in there, take a breather if you need, and keep at it--you'll
sculpt out big chunks of unerringly melodic, bordering-on-anthemic
folk-rock ("This Purple Child"), sweet textured country
blues (the pedal steel-informed "Explore You") and,
my favorite, a resilient number called "Propulsion"
that adds a left-channel passing freight train to the piano-bass-drums
arrangement. Pure Gelb, pure Giant Sand, pure Old Pueblo.
