Glum" is Howe Gelb's revenge – at least for the head-butting I gave Giant Sand's Purge and Slouch in the last issue. But his band's appealing 17th album validates my beef. Because when he's not a dilettante serving under-cooked glops of brown stew like Purge and Slouch, Gelb crafts some of the best oddball pop around.

Glum's cozy nestful of songs explores the sour corners of relationships. The tunes are blown to epic proportions by the fierce grandeur of Gelb's Crazy Horse guitars and a freewheeling spirit that prompts him to recast Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" as Charlie Rich-style cocktail country and to chase the tail of "Painted Bird" as it flits from a betrayal ballad to a whinnying distortion crush of amps through the spaghetti West and TV chatter on to a beatific Schroeder piano line that somersaults into the burnt-on-life anthem "Spun."

Such curves are a Gelb signature. Because he's capable of heartbeat transformations from warm-throated Okie to acid-fanged alien, we never know if he's leading us toward a rose garden or a demonic topiary. His ax can chop paths to both; "Glum" trails an especially gnarled solo with an Ivory-soft surf-guitar finale as its lyrics twist from contempt to confusion. And Gelb's talk-box-scarred outburst on "Faithful" drips with just the right touch of malice for a scather about gullibility and exploitation.

Virtuous as Gelb's songs, strings and Dylan-dusted voice are, it's his tics that have canonized him in indie-rock circles – and ruined his last album. On Glum they're better indulged: The late, silver-haired prairie crooner Pappy Allen sings "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," and Giant Sand dash into "One Helvakowboy Song" like Neil Young juggling TNT and exit via the lounge of the Bakersfield Holiday Inn, cheesy electric piano in tow. Gelb's daughter's squeaky "Bird Song," however, takes us back to Purge and Slouch's fractured terrain. Considered together, these divergent CDs tell us Gelb is a Sandman intent solely on his own dreams. (RS 690)

TED DROZDOWSKI