THE SOUND OF THE SANDWORMS, REVISITED AND REPURPOSED (2025): From artists you don't know come songs you never heard

Elsewhere has long followed the career of Howe Gelb into his various groups, among them Giant Sandworms, Giant Sand, The Band of Blacky Ranchette and innumerable albums under his own name.

One of the most interesting interviews we have done was with Tucson-based Gelb in 2011.

Gelb's songwriting ranges from desert psychedelia to Spanish styles (recorded in Spain with local players), from rock to whatever takes his fancy.

He's prolific: for decades he was producing so much music it was impossible to keep up with, but any time you tuned in there was always something.

Inevitably there would be a kind of tribute album with various artists covering his songs, but this one comes straight out of left-field.

We'll be honest and say we had never heard of, let along heard, most of the artists on Sandworms: The Songs of Howe Gelb And Giant Sand.

Are you familiar with Lily Konigsberg, Water From Your Eyes, Gently Tender and Holiday Ghosts?

Of the 10 represented on the vinyl we only knew of Jesca Hoop and John Parish, Angel Deradoorian and Golden Dregs (whose On Grace And Dignity album appeared in our 2023 best of the year list).

We thought we knew Ella Raphael, but actually we didn't.

The breadth of Gelb's oeuvre means that this collection goes in some interesting and rewarding directions: Forever and a Day by Gently Tender has a rolling stoner-rock groove which echoes Gelb's desert-adelic style and is a five minute song in two parts which neatly repeats itself; Yer Ropes by Golden Dregs is more downbeat kind of radio-static infused country-rock delivered somewhere between Johnny Cash gravitas and Willie Nelson's ease (and digitally appears as an instrumental); the brief New River by Holiday Ghosts is unpolished folk-pop-cum-rock . . .

Hoop and Parish steer But I Did Not towards a kind of white folk-gospel as the lyrics speak of an invitational from the Devil.

Gelb's lyrics are always worth taking in, they confound as much as they clarify (Who Am I here by Monde UFO), and Deradoodian heads into spaced-out space rock for Centre of the Universe (which comes with a slightly expanded version digitally).

Centre of the Universe, by Deradoorian

 

Ella Raphael's A Hard Man to Get to Know is terrific piece positioned closer to the B52s.

As we noted about Paul Weller's current album Find El Dorado, albums where artists don't do their own songs (tributes, covers) rarely sell in significant quantities and this might suffer the same fate.

But its diversity carries it and at some point you might be drawn to find out more about the writer behind these songs.

Be warned however, if you go down the Howe Gelb rabbit-hole you could be there for a very long, but pleasurable, time.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here