Howe Gelb

Sometimes, I have the odd blind spot. It doesn't happen much nowadays. I'm either too exasperated or too experienced. Show me any music and I can show you any number of other styles and voices it reminds me of. I've never completely got past PJ Harvey's debt to Patti Smith, no matter how often she sings us her travel journals. Radiohead sounds like a shoddy version of Trans Am to me, who themselves are remarkably reminiscent of Kraftwerk. Eminem's doing nothing that Leary didn't achieve only with 10 times the wit and commentary decades before. Maybe all I'm referring to here is my age: sooner or later, the points of reference stick, and it becomes almost impossible to move on.

Almost. Howe Gelb is one of the exceptions.

I'm not denying that I can hear traces of Tom Waits in his bruised silences and living room version of "Can't Help Falling in Love" (played exactly the way I would myself, stubborn fingers and wavering voice). My musical knowledge demands that I should acknowledge the debt Howe owes to the honeyed sadness of Gram Parsons, Jimmy Dale Gilmore and the Carter Family?and yet. I can't hear it myself. Not if I'm being honest. Whenever I go close to a Howe Gelb solo album (this is his fourth) or a Giant Sand record, I find myself only hearing traces of those who borrow blatantly and otherwise from him (Lambchop, Lemonheads, Grandaddy of course, even GS spin-off mariachi band Calexico). Howe beats to his own rhythm and sings to his own set of melodies, and when he starts tracing a rock lineage through JFK, Jimi Hendrix and Falling James of the Leaving Trains ("Pontiac Slipstream") it's very apparent that he reads from his own set of stories too.

Sometimes I think I can hear the whisper of the talented singer's native Arizona within the spooked silences and snatches of instrumentation. Other times, it's like he is whispering secrets and half-forbidden dreams into a tape recorder right by your side?the gentle "Blue Marble Girl," the almost humorous Farfisa on "Pedal Steel and She'll." The latter impression is probably more accurate: the 17 songs and snippets here were recorded in vans, studios, bathrooms and radio stations throughout America and Europe. This knowledge Howe has that the sterility of a 96-track studio doesn't necessarily make for the most intimate of settings is something he shares with both Tom Waits and Robert Johnson; and if the listener can't keep up, then the listener probably doesn't deserve to even be in the same fucking country as Howe.

Yes, Howe is one of my few blind spots. I'm not sure I've ever heard a Gelb song that I haven't found?at the very least?fascinating. Usually, I find his music life-enriching. Confluence confirms that feeling once again, another incredible album?only about the 24th?from a man who long ago found his own niche. You don't compare Howe to other artists. You compare other artists to Howe.