Cover Magazine

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
Japanese version of Howie Gelb's 2002 covers album includes two bonus tracks, 'Iron Man' (live/Black Sabbath cover) & 'The Pilgrim' (Chapter 33/Kris Kristoferson cover). The album features guest appearances by PJ Harvey & members of Calexico. Highlights i

Tracks:

El Paso/Out on the Weekend
Johnny Hit and Run Pauline
Iron Man
Human / Lovely Head
The Beat Goes On
Plants and Rags
Wayfaring Stranger / Fly Me to the Moon
Red Right Hand
King of the Road
I'm Leaving Now
Blue Marble Girl
The Inner Flame
The Beat Goes On

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Cover Magazine is an album of covers by Giant Sand. Howe Gelb, the frontman of these sun-baked Arizona country-rock legends, is a musician's musician who counts PJ Harvey, Grandaddy, and pretty much the whole of today's discerning alt.country set among his devoted fans. Now, however, he means to give something back: Cover Magazine fields a set of covers of Gelb's friends and influences, closing with a three-song live set recorded on tour with Grandaddy in 2001. The cover versions should be your first point of call: mostly recorded with Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino as the rhythm section, they reinvent Gelb's picks as expansive epics, creeping with weird voodoo and sand-blasted melancholy. Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" becomes a quietly sinister conga shuffle. Johnny Cash's "Wayfaring Stranger" segues into a bare, whispered take on the Sinatra classic "Fly Me to the Moon." And X's "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline" finds Polly Harvey weighing in with a fraught, tense drawl during the chorus. The pick, though, is a wonderful, finger-clicking run through Sonny Bono's "The Beat Goes On"--and it's so good, they reprise it on the three-song live set, along with "Blue Marble Girl," a new Grandaddy number, and "The Inner Flame," a song by sadly deceased Giant Sand guitarist Rainer Ptacek. --Louis Pattison

Album Description

A collection of songs (except one) written by others besides Howe Gelb. Though the original artists covered here run the gamut stylistically from classic rock to punk to heavy metal, country and trip hop, all are given the Giant Sand treatment. PJ Harvey lends her vocal talents to X's 'Johnny Hit and Run Pauline'. The 3 closing tracks feature members of Grandaddy captured live on tour in Europe during the Spring of 2001.

Customer Reviews:

A fan of more than music from San Francisco.......2002-05-01

I attended the Giant Sand show on Easter night in San Francisco and I felt the show was spectacular as is this new record, Cover Magazine. Each of the previous dozen times I've seen Howe & co.(Giant Sand, Calexico, Friends of Dean Martinez, Richard Buckner)live over the last seven years has been amazing and revelatory. All expectations and assumptions must be set aside when approaching Howe Gelb's live shows and recorded work. Howe Gelb is a multi-instrumental genius who has forgotten more about music than most musicians will ever learn. In fact, I would categorize Howe as more of a performance artist than simply a musician. If you think you'd enjoy hearing impromptu sound effects added to songs such as playing a piano by plucking the strings from the inside and causing distortion by putting the microphone inside the drum kit then you will like Giant Sand. When I first saw Howe live back in '96 I already owned fifteen of his records and he didn't play a single song with which I was familiar and he still blew me away! Howe is a complex artist/musician who is constantly changing and evolving. You will never attend a live show of Howe Gelb, Giant Sand, Calexico, etc. and hear a song played the way it was recorded on their commercial releases, or even hear the same song played the same way twice! Like any experimenting, jamming, free-form jazz band, this isn't a bad thing. They do not tour, or record, to regurgitate cookie cutter versions of their greatest hits to please the shallow pop music fan. Cover Magazine, like all of Howe's recorded work and live shows, is a slice of ethereal sonic time, captured like a photograph and never to be reproduced. Unexpected, sometimes discordant, sometimes inaccessible, idiosyncratic, off-the-wall, rough, turbulent, confusing - yes, these terms can all be used to describe Cover Magazine. However, I would be more prone to use terms such as "complex", "challenging", "intelligent", "horizon expanding", "exciting", "moody", "instinctual", "stimulating", "evolutionary", "eclectic", "personal", "strangely beautiful", "wryly humorous" , etc.

If you love Calexico, an exceptional band led by the amazing Joe Burns and John Convertino and deserved of all their recent success, check out their long time sage, Howe Gelb, via Giant Sand's Cover Magazine.

A Hodge Podge At Best.......2002-04-30

Either the band's fooling us or fooling themselves. After Gelb's lacksadaisical piano putterings on Lull, followed by this erratic and loose collection of covers, one is left to wonder whether Howe Gelb and crew have either lost interest, steam or both. Perhaps, looking at the inner liner photo of a golfer at the end of his swing, captioned "retirement," we should all, band included, take the hint? If so, a sad closure to one of America's most innovative and eclectic musical careers.

While there are a couple bright moments, it is perhaps significant that the high point of the album is the cover of their own tune, Blue Marble Girl. However, the Neil Young sonic stylings layered across the original are not enough on their own to rescue the rest of what is largely a muddled or unconvincing effort. Despite comments above, Bono's The Beat Goes On barely amuses in the closing, let alone the initial version, with both the reprise of Miller's King of the Road and Cash's I'm Leaving Now (Adios) failing to measure up to the orginals. And was there any credible reason, besides mucking around, to revisit Black Sabbath's Iron Man? If so, this becomes a rather odd and unfocused imitation. Finally, the cut Plants and Rags holds some interest, as does the segued combination of El Paso and Out On the Weekend, though Giant Sand certainly makes no real inroads upon the Neil Young original as performed with Crazy Horse, and the merging of the two songs at times appears contrived.

Overall, this seems an ill considered and poorly thought out performance on the part of Giant Sand, almost as if thrown together as an afterthought. After all the other great music this group has produced over the years, both together and in solo projects, the issue of this album can only come as a disappointment, and should be reserved solely for the die-hard, bury-your-head-in-the-Sand fan. Otherwise avoid and hope for something better in the future, or a less frugal or discerning friend willing to burn you a copy of track eleven.

mindboggling.......2002-04-27

as it is not as smooth as the earlier albums this one may repel some of the older fans -as one can read below-, but i wouldn't want to have 5 albums of a band that doesn't develop in a certain way. °cover magazine° is as slow as its precessors but smooth and fluid has become somewhat rough and turbulent, or, to refer to the often read comparisons, °cale° has become °cave°. if you have certain expectations of a new °giant sand°-album they might not be fulfilled, but if you fancy a collection of some unpolished diamonds, you will find it on this cd. and you know, diamonds are forever.

Not great, but good........2002-04-11

I approached this release with great trepidation.
I saw Giant Sand in San Fran on Easter Night and they
were dreadful. I know they are a "loose" band, but there's
a fine line between loose and self-indulgent non-sense, a fine line between having fun and having contempt for an audience that pays money to see you play, and Howe crossed it.
So I worried this recording would stink as bad as that show.
It doesn't. There are some nice tracks,
especially the first version "The Beat Goes On" and "Johnny
Hit and Run Pauline." It's not what fans would hope for after
"Chore of Enchantment" which was truly superb.
It's worth having for fans, but if you're new to Giant Sand,
get "Chore" and leave it in your cd player for a month or so.

For Hardcore Fans Only.......2002-04-02

Giant Sand has been very prolific over the years. Most of their releases, while being quite uneven in terms of quality, contain some gems. A few, such as Swerve, Ramp, Chore, and especially The Love Songs and Center of the Universe, are real keepers.

Cover Magazine falls into the first category. You can't fault Gelb for his choice of covers, however the performances are quite uninspired with Gelb half-heartedly mumbling the lyrics over joyless, sun-baked, cocktail loungey-music---a style that seems to be Gelb's latest muse. It worked on Chore of Enchantment. It worked on the OP8 project with Lisa Germano. It doesn't work here, despite support from the likes of PJ Harvey and members of Grandaddy

I've seen Giant Sand do some of these covers live and they are quite exciting when given the full rock treatment. Why strip them down so as to render them practically unlistenable?