FFWD Weekly
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Music by Mary-Lynn McEwen Howe Gelb Giant Sand Friday, April 21 Night Gallery His songs seep forth towards the subconscious like the La Brea tar seeps through the earth’s façade, darkly alive and connected to an ancient place. So you know that if you’re conversing with Howe Gelb, you’re not going to be making polite, meaningless conversation and talking about the weather. "Yes the weather. How about the whether or not?" the singer questions from his Tucson home. "It’s kind of a weird time. I feel like there’s a change to be made or something going on," he amends. Those "to be or not to be" kind of statements fit right in with Chore of Enchantment, Giant Sand’s most recent group of songs – songs punctuated by hit and run opera singers, classical gas and some indescribable tunes that grab the notion of popular music, folk music or whatever, and shake it between clenched teeth. And like many people going through a weird time, Gelb nurses the idea of getting professional help, only he’s more misguided than a visually impaired lemming when he chooses where to turn for help – he looks towards the group of generally ego-impaired wannabes, also known as music journalists. "Usually when I talk to the press it’s some form of therapy," he says. "I always wanted to have a therapist and I could never figure out how to get one. I can’t get to that point of getting one. And I don’t know what they do exactly. I’ve got all these ideas in my head, like that it would be somebody to argue with, which would be great. I imagine the great debate. "I think therapy is some kind of twist on the word theory. Theory jalopy, that’s what it is, a kind of rickety vehicle to get from one place to another. That’s what I seem to do with interviews – I go over and over certain things that either bug me or make me happy and I just need to hear myself saying them, and also to get the feedback. It’s kind of unprofessional I guess, but it seems to work." Life itself might be enough of a kick in the taco to drive some people to seek guidance, but the death of Gelb’s close friend and musical colleague, Rainer Ptacek, of brain cancer in 1997, nudged Gelb in his search for the winning team in the great debate. "When he got sick he just got closer to the mark, and one of the things he said was, when he knew that he could die, he got very clear about what he had time for, his work, how to talk really directly to people, and be more loving. When he began to get better after the treatment he confided in me that he missed the clarity." Which brings us back to Chore of Enchantment. It has been called the band’s most cohesive album to date, which Gelb claims is an impossibility due to the three producers, four cities, two record labels and year-and-a-half it took to record the thing. Maybe it’s because of how long the album has been with him that Gelb can’t internalize any praise for the music. "When people hear it and they like it so much or relate to it so much, it’s almost threatening. I ultimately don’t know why you like it. It’s like with any painting you see up on the wall, you can relate something to the painting, or it doesn’t have the things that you don’t like, like the old sculpture joke – get rid of the pieces that don’t look like what you’re making. It’s just what’s left, and ultimately you see your own reflection in it."

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