Giant Sand – Long Stem Rant / Swerve (25th Anniversary Reissues)

As reissue programmes go, few can be as deserved as Fire’s current project for Giant Sand. The records are being released to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the band in Tucson, Arizona. Over this time the band and their leader Howe Gelb have developed a cult following. Although they may not necessarily be the first name that jump to mind, Giant Sand’s influence has spread far and wide – one need only take a quick look at people who have appeared on their records or live over the years to see the respect in which Gelb is held: M. Ward, Juliana Hatfield, PJ Harvey, Vic Chesnutt, Jello Biafra to name but a few. On their most recent album, Blurry Blue Mountain, Gelb seemingly acknowledges his elder-of-the-scene status: “Now I amble 50, and the longest hours move so swiftly / such young fresh folk look to me as a pathfinder.’

Long Stem Rant was originally released in 1989, a sprawling twenty track record that saw a rawer, more improvised and experimental edge creep into the Giant Sand sound. ‘Sandman’ starts as a minimal, spoken word piece, fusing twanging guitar passages with primative drums before collapsing into discordant noise passages, ‘Bloodstone’ tears out of the tracks, all fuzzy riffing, wailing guitars and equally wailing, screaming punk vocals. There is a rawness to the songs that may take those more familiar with Gelb’s later work by surprise. While many of the tracks on Long Stem Rant don’t make it past the two minute mark, the 8 minute ‘Paved Road To Berlin’ feels positively epic. The track begins with Gelb transporting The Velvet Underground to the Arizona desert, before things take a turn for the more discordant. Amongst the discordance and sonic patchwork of studio out-takes, ‘Loving Cup’, a gentle acoustic ditty, positively gleams as it jangles quickly through it’s tales of lost love, sounding like a hidden outtake from one of Harry Smith’s Anthologies.

Released in 1990, Swerve retained some of the more improvised elements of Long Stem Rant, the ‘swerve’ tracks (‘Swerver’,’ Swerving’, ‘Swervette’ and ‘Final Swerve’) taking in cacophonous organ runs, scat singing and childrens voices. The album begins with ‘Can’t Find Love’, a duet between Gelb and Juliana Hatfield, built around a churning processed funk riff. Working at a time when country was still considered by many to be a dirty word, Gelb and co fused grungy guitars, folk and punk rock as well as noise and jazz elements – a lo-fi approach to country rock. ‘Trickle Down System’, built around Gelb’s spoken drawl and organ playing coming on like a grittier take on Dylan and The Band, with full gospel vocals and a screeching guitar solo for good measure is a particular highlight, as is the tender, spun out rendition of Dylan’s ‘Every Grain of Sand’, which is rife with sawing fiddles and blissfully buzzy guitars.

As with its predecessor, Swerve captures all that went on in the studio – both good and bad. While it is perhaps interesting to hear the abortive start of ‘Angels at Night’ (which collapses in to one of the musicians comically venting his anger at being asked to improvise “I hate doing this kind of shit. I need to know what the music is, I need to know what the words are, I need to know what the notes are. I’m a professional. I’m not no improviser, no scat musician”), it leads to a sometimes disjointed feeling that could perhaps be off putting for the casual listener. These are the kind of tracks that are usually the domain of the re-issue bonus tracks, yet it was this version that was chosen for the record back in 1990. Indeed, the bonus track here actually cuts the original take. It is interesting to note that the bonus versions here, rather than providing out-takes present edited and less dense versions of the tracks, most notably cutting the bizarre swing piano-jazz breakdown in ‘Former Versions of Ourselves’. Yet it is these very idiosyncrasies and oddities that have made Giant Sand and Gelb himself such a fascinating proposition over the years.

Long Stem Rant and Swerve are not perfect. Neither are they the obvious or easy entry point to the world of Giant Sand, but they certainly give an insight into how the band have developed in their own inimitable style over the years.