» Reviews: Brighton Festival – Giant Sand
Blues-country deconstruction anyone? Howie Gelb is usually your man. But not this time… ‘You pays your money and takes your chances’ goes the old maxim (probably coined by hedging artists), and judging by the steady trickle of leavers and shifting buttocks, the chances turned out poor as Gelb delivered a rambling and wandering performance, unable for the most part to lock into that all essential groove/zone that artists (and anyone for that matter) should aspire to. His work has always been hit or miss and semi-experimental but recently, as evidenced by the last album Blurry Blue Mountain, he’s gone all sleepy on us, so he makes up for it by crankin’ up the volume here and there, trying to find new chord patterns and different twists on what are essentially repetitive rhythms that evoke little more than dusty and unremarkable prairie towns. Even a guest appearance from Sarah Blasko for some jazzy-orientated numbers fails to lift the overall slumber. Gelb admits on stage, possibly realising he is losing us, that ‘we don’t rehearse’, that ‘you don’t need another band like that’ (ie one rehearsed), and that ‘we’re problem solvers’. Problems weren’t so much solved tonight as created.
Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, 19 May
Rating: 
Jeff Hemmings
May 20th, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Giant Sand, Brighton Dome, May 19 2011
‘We don’t rehearse’, says Giant Sand frontman Howe Gelb from under his cowboy hat. ‘Every other band you see rehearses – you don’t need another one!’. This is typical Gelb – funny, unconventional, and above all disingenuous. Giant Sand don’t need to rehearse – they are frighteningly good musicians, a fact which rubs up against their punk undercurrent and produces much of the evening’s unpredictable joy.
Gelb is some 40 albums into a 25 year career which spans a range of styles, but hang together through darkly funny lyrics, deep burr, and love for the desert south – specifically Arizona. This is modern country music, as you’d expect from the ‘godfather of alt-country’, and new album ‘Blurry blue mountains’ is a softer direction best summed up as Lou Reed plays Nashville.
Most of the set was drawn from the new record, Gelb switching between piano, guitar, and even different microphones – sometimes within the same song. Aussie starlet Sarah Blasco provided welcome breathy vocals on a stunning ‘Lucky star love’ at the mid-point, and the band and audience alike were frequently surprised by Gelb’s random cul-de-sacs. A Spanish version of The Doors’ ‘Light my fire’ ran into ‘Riders on the Storm’, and equipment trouble ended with a long anecdote about rare amplifiers concluding with ‘We are problem solvers. If there’s a problem, we attempt to fix it!’. There was even a misfit trad jazz interlude with Gelb on the piano, redeemed by a simply stunning ‘Chunk of coal’ to follow.
Finishing in full swing with country rockers ‘Molly Mcguire’ and ‘Swamp Thing’, the final word goes to the man himself – ‘that was savagely beautiful’.
James Farrell