Earlier this year Howe Gelb announced that Giant Sand were coming to a conclusion after 30 years stating, “30 years seems an adequate number to aptly utter ‘I kinda quit.” They released Heartbreak Pass in 2015 and are this year releasing a three volume vinyl boxset called The Sun Set.

Gelb certainly isn’t wallowing in self-abandoned misery though. Instead he’s striding forward with a solo album of new songs formed around the piano and inhabited by “cathartic one-liners and malleable melodies”. Future Standards is built on a tried-and-true and often revealing trio format who saunter though jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues corridors, culminating in an intimate and wholly absorbing sound – at least going by the first single Terribly So, which incidentally name-checks Australia.

Future Standards will be released on November 25th on LP/CD/DL via Fire Records.

Preorder – https://howegelbmusic.bandcamp.com/album/future-standards

“This is my attempt at writing a batch of tunes that could last through the ages with the relative structure of what has become known as “standards”.  The likes of Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael done up by Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday,” suggests Howe as the waiter pours another round, “It’s an age old ponder embedded within a larger palate of piano chords, framed with a subtle swing beat and the hush of an upright bass moan.”