Giant Sand
Chore Of Enchantment
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Giant Sand
Chore Of Enchantment
Thrill Jockey, 2000
RiYL: Gram Parsons, The Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground, electric Bob Dylan |
The record's strange journey from major label broadside to mail order-only curiosity to final safe harbor in the hands of prominent indie Thrill Jockey neatly parallels the unpredictable, serendipitious course of Giant Sand's live shows (and increasingly, Giant Sand's career).
Chore Of Enchantment was initially supposed to be Giant Sand's debut full-length for V2 records, which released Gelb's solo album Hisser a few years back ("Temptation Of Egg," one of the highlights of that record, is reprised here in a version with Juliana Hatfield on backing vocals). The label stonewalled for more than a year, refusing to either release the record or officially announce that the band had been dropped.
Giant Sand more or less gave up hope that the album would ever be released and began recording new stuff. Then, along came Thrill Jockey. Unlike older Giant Sand albums (the band used to habitually release a new album every eight months), the material here is the best of four years and untold dozens of recording sessions. It's also easily the best thing they've ever done.
Taking country and folk structures as a basis for tunes which employ samples and Walkman-hooked-up-to-delay-pedal stunts as naturally as Wurlitzers and accordions, Gelb creates a deep sonic bed for his subdued, laconic vocal murmurings. Chore Of Enchantment resonates throughout with a sense of loss, partly for Gelb's late best friend Rainer Ptacek (whose haunting slide guitar solo "Shrine" closes the album), but partly for something less tangible. Howe sings of a "headachy nation," with wolves circling just outside the door, yet "still ill equipped to care."
The music backs the lyrics' discomfiture with spacious ease. Plenty goes on around the backbone of Gelb's guitar, Joey Burns' bass, and John Convertino's drums -- the amusing album credits include mentions for "pump organ mocking Howe's can't remember licks," "Casio a la Love Unlimited Orchestral Manueverings," and "all that clicking."
Most of the tunes are slow acoustic-electric numbers with flashes of organ and pedal steel to add texture, but the exceptions are well-chosen and effective. "Satellite" is a reverb-drenched noise rocker with wrenching lead guitars and the unsettling noises of scraping chairs and fast-forwarding cassette tapes. It sets the mood for a goofy Gelb lyric, which includes the line "you can get Leonard Nimoy to play the part of Leonard Cohen."
Homemade experimental numbers like the wacky "Overture" and junk-punk "1972" appear as occasional pace-breakers. Elsewhere, "Wolfy" sets one of Gelb's most apocalyptic lyrics over a jarringly inappropriate dance beat and distorted piano clanks.
The album's heart is in clean, honest songs like "Shiver" and "No Reply," where Gelb really exposes his vulnerability, stripped of his studio tricks and sneaky wordcraft. "Come on deliver / the shiver," Howe mumbles on the former. Chore Of Enchantment does so in spades.
Extra credit for including no less than a full side's worth of bonus tracks on the vinyl version. That's what I'm talking about.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.