Gelb howe

Willy Vlautin and co to showcase new album “Thirteen Cities”

Uncut favourites add desert twang to Willy Vlautin’s melancholy tales

Richmond Fontaine's Willy Vlautin tells us what to expect from new album, Thirteen Cities

Howe Gelb's peripatetic lifestyle captured on record

Hawaiian guitarist/pedal-steeler's expertly bottled Pacific breeze

Fourth album in 20 years from Giant Sand's twisted country cousin

Smart, educational survey of two decades of alt.country

Star-crammed electro-mysticism from Greece's Akis Boyatzis

After the early patronage of Howe Gelb, Oregon's Matt Ward dished up 2001's End Of Amnesia, one of the most breathtaking albums of recent years. Transfiguration...is another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. The behind-a-screen-door quality of production adds to the strangeness, while the likes of "Undertaker" often stop, start, scuff around then veer off at a tangent. Somewhere between a Gelb bothering to finish off songs and The Band at their most bucolic.