Giant Sand
O2 ABC2, Glasgow
15/01/2011

At one point during his politely received support set, The Boy Who Trapped The Sun reveals that he was thrilled when asked to open for “a band called Giant Sand”. He admits that he had never heard of them beforehand, but that, to him, the name invokes the image of two men arguing over whether a large boulder is in fact a rock or a ‘giant sand’. It’s the way he tells them. However amiable his intentions, The Boy’s stage patter elicits murmurs of disapproval throughout the venue. The devoted audience knows that the band’s moniker is an abbreviation of ‘Giant Sandworms’ and that a rare UK date from them is an occasion not for levity, but for reverence. Some Johnny-come-lately singer-songwriter’s assurance that they’re “actually really good” means nothing to those assembled in the ABC tonight.

When the headliners arrive, frontman Howe Gelb cuts a quietly assured, messianic figure, the kind that can only be borne of over 25 years’ under-appreciation and cult status. A compelling performer, he delivers a set of roughly hewn wonder to an expectant crowd, and would appear to do so effortlessly, were he not suffering from a head cold tonight. Currently backed by a tight Danish four-piece, Gelb’s instinctive tendencies are cushioned by his bandmates’ professionalism. He is given free-reign to indulge in the jarring and the discordant, his colleagues somehow incorporating these deviations into the songs’ established structures.

A rearranged, ragged take on ‘Shiver’ gets things underway in a winningly accessible fashion. On the following ‘Fields Of Green’, however, Gelb is dishing out bursts of rudimentary Spanish guitar before the more conventional rootsy backdrop. A lengthy ‘Monk’s Mountain’ seems like it could implode under the weight of its own cinematic dustiness at any given moment and, indeed, when the audience applauds upon its close, Gelb’s expression is one of relief as much as gratitude. By the murky funk work-out of ‘Brand New Swamp Thing’ and ‘Ride The Rail’‘s evangelical rockabilly, the audience’s trust in Gelb is unshakeable. Always a group to defy expectation, no one could have predicted quite how good Giant Sand would sound tonight.

Lewis Porteous