The lights are on. The computers are running. The cages are unlocked, and the typing monkeys have been put to work. Physically, we here at the FDFAB offices have long since returned from our four day excursion – nearly two weeks ago – into the heart of the Sonoran Desert in search of, among other things, that perfect union of malt, hops, water, and yeast.
Mentally, though – spiritually, perhaps – the return has been harder to pinpoint. It’s not so easy a transition, going from merely oppressive heat to the oppressive atmosphere of Los Angeles. Especially Los Angeles. The mountains always loom in the horizon, both barrier and gateway to a world of tranquility that can’t be found amidst cloudless brown-gray skies, crumbling, fading concrete, and that unending turf war between the armies of Escalades and Priuses.
That’s why people go to the desert, really. To find themselves or to lose themselves. Troubled souls, confused souls, lost souls wandering – aimlessly or purposefully – to escape the watchful eye of the law, the maddening pace of modernity, or the tightening grip of encroaching surroundings. They go to find peace. To find solitude. To find clarity.
But what happens when the desert doesn’t hold the answers? When solitude becomes desolation? When one’s thoughts, instead of converging into that sought-after focus and clarity, begin to fracture and fray?
Giant Sand’s new album proVISIONS (out last month on YepRoc) might not explicitly ask those questions – nothing is so explicit when, as Giant Sand’s architect Howe Gelb puts it, “Giant Sand is a mood” – but the disc’s dark, meandering path offers a sobering glimpse at the answers.
What begins as longing (“When I look in your eyes I surrender / Such surrender is rendered justified,” Gelb sings on opener “Stranded Pearl”) becomes surrender of an altogether different kind, as the road leads to Vegas – “a hapless joint” – and Gelb verges on triumphant in the realization that “I’m never gonna leave / I’m never gonna leave well enough alone.”
A relatively straightforward (though decidedly idiosyncratic) mix of honky tonk country and rockabilly sinks steadily into despair, culminating in the piano ballad “Spiral.” Elsewhere, Gelb dances around both melody and meaning with a drawling delivery and sly, sometimes subversive wordplay that embraces ambiguity. Here, though, at its most forlorn, proVISIONS approaches lucidity – hauntingly sparse and harrowingly direct in its appraisal of the state of the world.
But it is here, too, with the truth laid bare, that things begin to crumble. It unravels slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, with the tense but somber “Pitch And Sway” – but the washed out world of proVISIONS is quickly engulfed in chaos. Solid footing – steady bass lines, guitar melodies both lilting and soaring, horns, piano – appear and disappear like mirages on the horizon. Discordant notes and noises rudely interject as the rational realm of words and vocals fights a losing battle with the abstract.
(This battle plays out most strikingly on the dazzling epic “The New Romance of Falling,” an almost Sisyphean, nearly nine minute quest to find melodic resolution. The song builds, disintegrates, builds, disintegrates, then breaks through with a shimmering burst of melody, only to collapse completely. Talk about your desert mirages, though – this song seems to have vanished from the retail version of the CD, replaced by the less daunting 4 1/2 minute “Belly Full of Fire.” Go figure.)
Then, of course, the answer that’s no answer at all. The clarity to recognize clarity as a temporary illusion. The celebration of human futility, “Well Enough Alone,” perhaps the most conventional track on the entire disc.
Deliberate manifesto or incidental philosophy – does it matter? Is the answer even there to be found? Maybe it’s just a mood after all. An evolving and ambiguous mood, murky in its meaning but savored for its flavor. Assertive but ambiguous in its own right, Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity is the ideal accompaniment. Old Viscosity’s stark, scorched-earth color both suggests and belies its profusion of flavors, as dark, bitter chocolate and coffee flavors mingle with caramel sweetness, hints of licorice and a lingering, warming whisper of bourbon. Sip slowly and ponder, or simply enjoy the swirling sounds of proVISIONS while Old Viscosity swirls in your glass on this fine day for a beer.
