Howe Gelb
Hisser

"Man has two choices: solitude or vulgarity." (A. Schopenhauer)

What nonsense, yet I believed it. I'm alone, fatigue bends my back, the house is empty, I should be on my comfortable couch reading the novel I started too many days ago, and instead, I'm here writing this thing. I don't have the courage to call it a "review." I'm not made to be alone.

Playing at a low volume is this Hisser, album by the prolific Howe Gelb. I didn't understand anything. The out-of-tune sound of a dusty guitar and a harsh voice. I don't know if I understand it as the author intended. Yet it's the sound of my silence, of this evening's darkness where not even the mosquitoes keep me company. I haven't turned on the light, and my eyes are burning. It's just me and a handful of folk songs recorded on a budget, at first take, and piled up with minimal details that you struggle to recognize in the acknowledgments at the end of the booklet. The dust hasn't buried my desire to rediscover certain small emotions. For a long time, this album was silent, whether I listened to it or forgot it among a thousand others.

Tonight's the night, said Neil Young, and it's true. I don't know what he meant, but I know what I feel. It's the night when the notes of "Temptation Of Egg" mean a lot, they dance humbly around the room and settle in the recorder's rustle. "Tanks Rolling Into Town," but I don't see them, I look up and gaze at the field in front of my yard, now shapeless, telling me "there's no one tonight, make yourself enough." Tomorrow awaits a day of work, hurry, leisure, someone to care for, something to think about, worries, and laughter.

The music? Folk, blues, Tex-Mex, acoustic guitars, dragged words, percussion, passing piano, all so small. It's my silence, I don't know if it belongs to someone else too.