Chore Of Enchantment (studio album) by Giant Sand

From AAL2014 05/12/2025 02:07

Discovered this record through the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die generator.

While it took me a minute to connect with the feel of the record and appreciate the approach taken in the songwriting and vocal departments respectively, this kept feeling more and more interesting and cohesive as the project went on.

Chore of Enchantment is a subversive and diverse array of alt country-isms being blindsided by slowcore sensibilities. Really cool.

From planetneutral 02/11/2018 17:41

Got a lot of that Malkmus vibe, which I like. But that didn't make me care.

From buzzdainer 05/21/2017 18:55

Reviewing this album for the Onion's A.V. Club, Joshua Klein writes that Chore of Enchantment "is the product of a land [frontman Howe Gelb's native southern Arizona] populated by bleached cow bones, saguaros, and peyote, a spare and spooky platform for Gelb's flights of poetic fancy. The music is so evocative that the songs can best be described by what they recall rather than how they sound: moonlit highways, flickering campfires, stars peeking out from behind mountainous silhouettes, and generator-powered home studios packed with antique and obscure instruments. For the less abstract-minded, 'Neil Young jamming with The Flatlanders in Death Valley' will probably do fine." Here Gelb teams up with Calexico founders and longtime collaborators Joey Burns and John Convertino to make Giant Sand's finest album, whose best song, "Shiver," is as ghostly and lonesome as moonrise over the Santa Catalina Mountains.