Somebody near the end of this ILM thread said that the new GS album is as good as Chore of Enchantment, the Rainer Ptacek memorial album from eight years ago. It could well be true. At least if it continues growing on me like it did just within four listens. The first question about every GS album is the line-up. Who is Howe Gelb playing with? The same Danish guys he played with the last time a GS album was released in 2004 (GS Is All Over the Map). He had met them touring Aarhus. In the meantime we had a couple of so-called solo albums by Howe, namely Sno' Angel Like You where he teamed up with a Canadian gospel choir. Not exactly my kind of tea but it was a pleasant listen and Howe's guitar and his baritone harmonised quite well with the soulful mostly female voices.

The new one is more in the vein of classic GS albums of the discreet, lagging kind. It starts with the Leonard Cohen impersonation Stranded Pearl. Howe's baritone is not yet down there but the accompanying singer Isobel Campbell - who has been co-singing for Belle & Sebastian up to 2002 - has got enough dreamy lasciviousness in her voice to compete with Leonard's complete background choir roundabout the Phil Spector production ruin Death of a Ladies' Man. A second song which didn't engrave itself into my brain yet - something which will probably change soon - is followed by Can Do where Howe sounds like the man in black reincarnated. Even the guitar has got the rough country charm of Johnny Cash's. The sixth track is the climax of the album. On Increment of Love Howe shows his knack for a brittle tune. I like him most in this kind of night atmosphere, laid-back, the desert 's aridity in his voice, telling a weird little nonsensical story about chromosomes, cells flipping from her lip and the lucky little lava hip. The next song Spiral is excellent too, plain, solemn, almost like a prayer. Howe on piano, singing in a duet with a woman from the gospel choir. Pitch & Sway is a meandering affair, it's always exciting to see Howe getting lost in his ruminations. Muck Machine is dominated by a cool, funky electric bass riff, almost rocking out but not quite. Free-flowing stuff where the band grazes on jazzy pastures follows. Altogether this is a pretty solid Giant Sand release, something which can be said of most of their albums. Definitely worth the bucks. They can make use of them much better than any investment bank. And as a bonus you get two additional songs from the website which I haven't even listened to yet.