Giant Sand - Is All Over the Map
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Giant SandEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-09-14
Music Label: Thrill Jockey
Soundtracks:
- Classico
- NYC of Time
- Remote
- Flying Around the Sun with Remarkable Speed
- Cracklin' Water
- Rag
- Muss
- Drag
- Fool
- Les Forcats Innocents
- Napoli
- Hood (View From A Heidelburg Hotel)
- Classo Reprise, A
- Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle
- Ploy
Free Music Notes for Is All Over the Map
Free Music Review: How big can sand be? And if its on your map, can you get it off?
Hit: 5 Stars
The answer to my little review's title rhetoricals are with Giant Sand's album, "Is All Over the Map," Howe Gelb's sand can be pretty big when he wants it to be. And as for sand on your map? Well, I suppose that all depends on what type of material your map is made from? If its one of the wacky survival maps made of untearable material and designed to be submerged in water, I'd say the chances are pretty good Giant Sand particles would brush right off. However, if you have one of those new-fangled two-sided tape laminated maps that are coming out right now in REI's across the country I'd say if you are doing a beach hiking excursion you are pretty much stuck -- stuck with sand stuck to your map. But that just may be me.
So right about now, if you are still reading this, you may be asking yourself, "Self, What in name of the holy tar of God's Green hills does this review have to do with the price of coffee beans in a Beijing Starbuck's?" Well, I'd respond to you by saying, that's certainly an odd question to be asking of an Amazon reviewer writing about Howe Gelbe's Giant Sand's 2004 offering "Is All Over the Map," but hey, whatever freaks your peak my friend, whatever freaks your peak.
So I'm heading to this Giant Sand - Neko Case concert next month and thought I'd need to do some research. Since I'm intimately familiar with Case's work (and I love those red locks of hers and that Patsy Cline vocal style Fox Confessor Brings the Flood), Giant Sand, I'd never heard of. So my research started right here on Amazon's lovely on-line shopping extravaganza of a website with Giant Sand Is freakin' really all over the map, the research results you very well may ask?
If I had to pigeon-hole the Sand sound, I'd say its most akin to The Silver Jews Starlite Walker. That indie-hipster songwriter cred quasi-alt country is all there in the Sand's work. There's some similarities to Calexico as well Garden Ruin. Now what about the music? I'd say somebody shoulda handing out an award to Gelb in 2004 for the single best song title in track 14, "Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle." It's the 2004's answer to the Sex Pistol's Anarchy in the UK...expect this time around Howe Gelb has apparantley taken a hit on some sort of illicit drugs or another and written and performed this song to all of the 17 people that have listened to it over the years. I believe Gelb's own daughter Patsy, named after Patsy Cline mind you, does a Lydon-esque vocals turn on this track. Best line, "Mamma, don't let your babies grow up to be Tolstoys," which when you really look at it is some darn fine advice considered what happened to the young Leo in Moscow when he got into serious gambling debts that forced him to reconsider his life and become a Christian anarchist and a darn fine memorable writer to boot. So, I don't know where that leaves us really on Gelb's lyrical Tolstoyian advice?
Back to the music my friend, there's a number titled "NYC in Time," which is really all over the map. At first it reminded me of the Silver Jews' paen to the city of Dallas but only this time the music is performed by Giant Sand and pays homage to New York City...the big city, the real American city. The song morphs halfway through and becomes this terrific lyrically word play with the chorus becoming, "In the nick of time,"...that's a very nice Mr. Gelb.
What else to do you have on this album? You've got "Flying Around the Sun at Remarkable Speed," every bit a deserved bonified college radio hit if there ever was one and my friend there have been a few underground indie hugely popular for the mass audience hits in the history of music. Then you have this French spin-off loungey kind of number, "Les Forcats Innocents," which to the best of my knowledge is actually sung in another language. I have translated the lyrics and the title I believe means, "I once had four cats whom on the surface looked pretty innocent but when it really came down to it were psycho crazy hose-beasts like their wild counterparts and were silently plotting together how to rip my eyes out and shred my SpongeBob PJ's while I slept." The title aside, the rest of the song translates to pretty much of the same thematic themes.
Now I'm fired up to go to the concert in the land of big D and am almost as excited about seeing the Giant Sand of love and leisure as I am about seeing Case. But then there's that beautiful red hair and those golden retro pipes. Get this CD my friend...it's all over the map, yes, but it should be on you map or at least your radar range. ...mmw
Is All Over the Map Poster
Their most focused work to date. Ringleader Howe Gelb leads a new cast of Sandmen through the proverbial song desert. From the somber "Classico" to the rocking "Flying Around The Sun..." to the desert sand sound of "Les Forcats Innocents", there's simply no denying the force of a Giant Sand recording.Alternative Rock Music CDs
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