Hisser
Ambient and lo-fi sounds, tape click and whir, gut-string scrapes, orchestrated loops of train moans, a voice just fallen from bed with terrible nicotine cravings, and the whole mix swallowed up in desert-cave reverb: Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb's solo project has a dark, elliptical charm, floating somewhere between Ennio Morricone and Beck's demo tapes. Gelb doesn't forget--usually--about melodic craft and even shiny lyrical hooks. "Shape of a woman / Temptation of egg," for instance, is inscrutable but memorable. The best material, however, makes the intentionally casual and slapdash moments seem like throwaways:Hisserwould have profited from coherent editing and sequencing. Some songs come across as two-minute splices of cinéma vérité, remarkably vivid on "Four Door Maverick," a song about driving through storms and a kind of Southwest homage to Gelb's deceased friend Ranier Patchek. Gelb marries end-of-the-rope associations with brooding guitar and piano lines, and save a few excessively eccentric indulgences--the sophomoric, distorted vocal crisscrossing of the title track and other lapses into studio-effects goofery--the album is eerie and fascinating.--Roy Kasten