The Listener marks 20 idiosyncratic years of
Howe Gelb on his own. His first solo effort, the cassette-only Incidental Music, hit the streets in 1983 and although he's issued other solo works since, he remains best known as the man behind Arizona's equally idiosyncratic
Giant Sand and OP8 with
Lisa Germano. Recorded primarily in Denmark (from where his second wife, Sophie Albertsen, hails),
Gelb sounds as Southwestern as ever (even if he actually grew up in Pennsylvania). His distinctive voice has always come across like a dust-blown cross between
Lou Reed,
Neil Young, and
Lee Hazlewood, but there's more jazzy piano and understated brass and strings here than rock & roll or country guitar. On "Felonious," Mr. "Home" as he's billed himself, even acknowledges the debt to
Reed, while wishing he could play the keys more like
Duke Ellington or
Thelonious Monk -- even if the melancholy number sounds more like
Young's "After the Gold Rush." The overall mood is casual, laid-back, and relaxed. Just as
Lee Hazlewood once titled an album,
Cowboy in Sweden,
The Listener could as easily have been titled "A (Space) Cowboy in Denmark." ~ Kathleen C. Fennessy