At his best, Howe Gelb's an inbred genius, telegraphing junk-sculpture Giant Sand CDs from his post in the plains outside Tucson, Ariz. He recycles the wreckage of Dylan, Creedence and the Stones with a downtown Manhattanite's ear for noise and minimalist blurting, occasionally burnishing his songs with Nashville grit or rocking them like an angry savage. The payoff is albums like 1991's folky poetic Ramp.

At his worst, Gelb's an ardent trash picker who can't – or won't – cobble his scraps into form. Riffs wither after a few repetitions; lyrics drizzle into incoherence. Things buzz and bump and crash as randomly as drunken bees. The result is dross like Purge and Slouch, 21 recorded notions that rarely scale the evolutionary ladder to songhood.

The debate among cultists who've supported Gelb for more than a decade is whether such albums reveal a dismaying lack of craft or are works of disjointed brilliance. Make no mistake: Purge and Slouch is lazy. Cut in a friend's house, it's an off-the-cuff jam session that should have been kept in a drawer until its bones could be picked for ideas.

And there are song ideas here. The instrumental "Santana, Castanada and You" sets a great meandering guitar riff over a brush-on-a-bucket beat but doesn't know when to quit. Likewise "Corridor," a genuine pop tune with backing vocals by ex-Bangle Vicki Peterson and Susan Cowsill that yawns to a close at 7:30. "Elevator Music" is the album's only wake-up call, with witty lyrics about the death of rock as rebellion. The rest flops between boozy mumbling and the kind of dabblings an off-duty lawyer with a four-track might record, leavened by the occasional charming outburst of Gelb's skittish guitar. It's a case of too much slouching and too little purging.

Purge and Slouch is available from Restless Records at 1616 Vista del Mar, Hollywood, CA 90028, or by calling (213) 957-4357. (RS 689)

TED DROZDOWSKI