The four-year gap between Giant Sand's Is All
Over The Map
and the new proVISIONS suggests that Howe Gelb may be slowing down after rounding
the half-century mark. He's spent more than half his years making grungy,
brooding country, and he's got no reason to change things up now: Not too many
people still make (or get recording contracts for) this kind of grumbling,
atmospheric bar-blues, the kind played in the smoky, solo-bourbon-drinkin'
corners of the Southwest's seedy underbelly—so the niche needs Gelb to
continue carrying the torch. And proVISIONS isn't exactly more of the
same; perhaps aging has had a somber effect, as these sparse songs are more
isolated and lonely than Gelb's prior work. His characters rustle through the
fringes of society, skirting between sorry and sinister, often against
suggestions of an ominous political backdrop (especially on "Pitch & Sway"
and "Spiral"). This context of simmering societal turmoil makes his subjects
seem like scurrying rats at the approach of oncoming apocalypse, creating a
creeping foreboding that permeates. An assortment of contributors both adds to
the tension (Neko Case sings on the echoing "Without A Word") and detracts from
it (M. Ward only makes the trucker tune "Can Do" even more of a non-fit on the
record), but proVISIONS is an older Gelb at his gloomiest.