Giant Magazine #9

Free Hand was Gentle Giant's seventh album originally released in July 1975. This album was the most commercially successful of the band's career reaching the top 40 albums in Billboard Magazine. It stands as the culmination of the band's maturity, following the successes of 'In A Glass House' & 'The Power & The Glory'. Having toured Europe & North America non-stop in the years prior to this release with artists like Jethro Tull, Yes, Zappa etc, the band had gone from strength to strength…

Influential alt country band whose sound evolved into a crisp mix of swing, country, rock and beatnik lyricism. Giant Sand was the primary outlet for the stylistic curveballs and sun-damaged songcraft of Howe Gelb, a Pennsylvania-born singer/guitarist who formed the four-piece Giant Sandworms after relocating to Tuscon, Arizona in the mid-'70s. After releasing the EP Will Wallow and Roam After the Ruin in 1980, Gelb fired everyone but bassist Scott Gerber (although founding guitarist Rainer Ptacek returned to the fold many times in the future) and started over as simply Giant Sand, essentially a one-man band backed by a revolving cast of players.

Influential alt country band whose sound evolved into a crisp mix of swing, country, rock and beatnik lyricism. Giant Sand was the primary outlet for the stylistic curveballs and sun-damaged songcraft of Howe Gelb, a Pennsylvania-born singer/guitarist who formed the four-piece Giant Sandworms after relocating to Tuscon, Arizona in the mid-'70s. After releasing the EP Will Wallow and Roam After the Ruin in 1980, Gelb fired everyone but bassist Scott Gerber (although founding guitarist Rainer Ptacek returned to the fold many times in the future) and started over as simply Giant Sand, essentially a one-man band backed by a revolving cast of players.

Cover Magazine is like a primer on long-running Arizona institution Giant Sand: a mix of highbrow and lowbrow influences rendered with exquisite musicianship, all saturated by the hushed, plainspoken vocals of Howe Gelb. Over the years, this revolving cast of characters has been compared to everyone from Bob Dylan to Neil Young (with or without Crazy Horse), but the strongest resemblance on this live outing is to the Band (Gelb even sounds a bit like Robbie Robertson) – …