
GIANT SAND
THE DESOTO CAUCUS & HOWE GELB REMERGE 20 YEARS AFTER THEIR BEGINNING
OF EUROPEAN GIANT SAND AND “ALL OVER THE MAP” RECORD.
9 years afer their last album together, Howe Gelb and his Danish compadres can no longer
leave it be; coincidences made them part ways, and in many ways, it’s coincidences that
now draw them back together. A short spontaneous reunion set at a Howe Gelb solo show
in 2021 sparked a fame that is now burning so strong that the inevitable becomes real.
Thus fans of alt. country, americana, or what Gelb has dubbed “erosion rock” gets a chance
to join the gang as they revive their best work and shed light on new material.
In September the DeSoto Caucus & Howe Gelb remerge to pick up where they left off
sometime after their 2015 show at the Glastonbury festival. It’s the tight energetic outfit
that first caught the attention of Giant Sand fans with the 2004 album ”All Over the Map”
and made Pitchfork’s Mathew Murphy note that:
“I can’t say for certain whether or not it’s due to the exit of his former bandmates,
but something has certainly got him [Howe Gelb] all riled up here. Throughout the
album, he sounds as ornery as a javelina in an undersized cage, and the result is
some of the rowdiest Giant Sand music since 1992 [..] he leads the (predominantly
European) ensemble through some of Giant Sand’s most satsfying Crazy Horse-
derived rockers ever.”
Peter Dombernowsky, Anders Pedersen, Thøger T. Lund and Nikolaj Heyman have stayed
busy since. Besides live and studio work as valued sidemen for artsts such as Mark
Lanegan & Isobel Campbell, M. Ward, Jolie Holland and numerous others, their band the
DeSoto Caucus, which started as a side project, has become an appraised vehicle for
songwritng and live shows hailing some of the artstc concepts and aesthetcs that always
made Giant Sand worth following. Something in the lines of what Pitchfork put this way in
2008:
“Peyote rock, twilight ballads, space cowboy soundtracks, and spooky sidetracks of
the beaten path [..] It’s not about the destnaton. It’s about the trip.”