Giant Sand, from Tucson, Ariz., is what country music would sound like if it flipped out, swallowed some peyote and cranked up the volume. On the new album Glum (Imago), Gelb offers fractured compositions about lost love, sleepless nights and the mean things that desperate people do. Sometimes Gelb’s juxtapositions seem designed for shock effect: “1 Helvakowboy Song” (read it phonetically) veers from screeching guitar to rodeo hollers to a cocktail jazz interlude. Other times his loose experiments yield moments of real beauty. “Yer Ropes” is a soft, surreal glide through a broken relationship, told with a wistful melody and subtle slide guitar.
Palace Brothers, from Louisville, Ky., have a semianonymous rotating lineup; Oldham didn’t even put his own name in the credits for Palace Brothers (Drag City). The album, recorded in a friend’s house on a four-track machine, has an intentionally low-fi feel. Oldham strums a guitar with the barest accompaniment and sings in a cracked voice that almost seems like a modern version of the country yodelers of yore; his songs are somber little folk hymns, with simple melodies and repeated phrases. “Palace Brothers” is meant to feel like a 1930s field recording. By using the old-fashioned techniques, Oldham manages to recapture a little of the purity of Jimmie Rodgers or a bluesman like Robert Johnson.
Both Palace Brothers and Giant Sand are a far cry from most contemporary country music. Listening to mainstream country radio, one hears echoes of the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt; Gelb and Oldham go back to the original sources, and reshape them as they please. Their music may be unconventional, but their visions get at a heartland most people never see.
