Giant Sand

Giant Sand served as the chief vehicle for Howe Gelb’s unpredictable stylistic shifts and sun-baked songwriting. The Pennsylvania-born singer and guitarist discovered his creative center in Tucson, Arizona, during the 1980s. What began as a loose, psychedelic-leaning rock outfit gradually evolved, with Gelb and an ever-changing roster of musicians, into a unit that fused hard-rock guitars and lonesome country accents inside a parched, dust-laden atmosphere perfectly suited to his wry, off-kilter lyrics. The band’s signature atmosphere crystallized on the 1988 album The Love Songs, while Glum in 1995 and Chore of Enchantment in 2000 found Gelb and his colleagues operating at their strongest. Although Gelb disbanded Giant Sand in 2016, he revived the project during summer 2018 with the album Returns to Valley of Rain.

The group’s history started when Gelb assembled the four-piece Giant Sandworms after moving to Tucson in the mid-1970s. Following the 1980 EP Will Wallow and Roam After the Ruin, he dismissed every member except bassist Scott Gerber—though original guitarist Rainer Ptacek rejoined periodically—and relaunched the project simply as Giant Sand, effectively a solo endeavor supported by a rotating cast.

The debut Giant Sand album, 1985’s Valley of Rain, prompted critics to liken Gelb’s reedy vocals and gritty, country-tinged guitar work to Neil Young; like Young, Gelb revealed an unceasing creative restlessness, confirmed by the largely acoustic 1986 release Ballad of a Thin Line Man, which included harmony vocals from former Go-Go’s member Paula Jean Brown. In 1988 Giant Sand delivered two further albums, the similarly sprawling Storm and The Love Songs.

With 1989’s raw and largely improvised Long Stem Rant the lineup had dwindled to Gelb and drummer John Convertino, while 1990’s Swerve welcomed guests including Juliana Hatfield and Poi Dog Pondering. Ramp in 1991 and Center of the Universe in 1992 revisited the ragged desert-rock approach of earlier recordings, yet 1994’s Glum—Giant Sand’s sole release on major-label Imago—shifted toward an unexpectedly introspective and subdued mood. Backyard Barbecue Broadcast, issued in 1995, drew from two live radio performances.

Alongside Giant Sand, Gelb sometimes recorded as Band of Blacky Ranchette to explore his country inclinations; he also released the solo album Dreaded Brown Recluse in 1991. Convertino, meanwhile, played in the lounge-revival outfit Friends of Dean Martinez, and frequent associate Ptacek maintained a solo career until his death from cancer on November 12, 1997. Chore of Enchantment, Giant Sand’s first album for independent Thrill Jockey, appeared in early 2000. It was followed by the all-covers set Cover Magazine in 2002 and the studio album All Over the Map in 2004. The band moved to Yep Roc for 2008’s Provisions and celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary two years later with Blurry Blue Mountain.

Gelb broadened the band’s scope and honored his adopted hometown with Tucson, a self-described country-rock opera credited to Giant Giant Sand and released in July 2012. While Fire Records undertook a comprehensive reissue program of the back catalog and Gelb issued solo albums The Coincidentalist in 2013 and Radian Verses Howe Gelb in 2014, Giant Sand returned in 2015 with Heartbreak Pass, featuring contributions from Grant-Lee Phillips, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, and the Common Linnets’ Ilse DeLange.

In February 2016 Gelb issued a statement announcing both a forthcoming album titled The Sun Set and a European tour, along with the unexpected declaration that Giant Sand would disband. “30 years seems an adequate number to aptly utter ‘I kinda quit’,” he wrote. “There’s plenty enough here, more than imaginable.” The same statement indicated that Gelb planned to continue as a solo artist, adding, “Piano for now. Songs forever.”

Ultimately, Gelb soon concluded there was still space for Giant Sand. In 2018 he assembled a new lineup that included guitarists Annie Dolan and Gabriel Sullivan, drummer Winston Watson, and bassists Scott Garber and Thøger T. Lund. The reconstituted band revisited its origins on Returns to Valley of Rain, offering fresh interpretations of material from the 1985 debut Valley of Rain. In 2019 Gelb and his colleagues applied a similar treatment to the songs from the second album on Recounting the Ballads of Thin Line Men. An expanded and remastered edition of 1991’s Ramp, complete with a bonus LP of live recordings, appeared in 2020.