Geckøs
★★★★★
Geckøs
ORG MUSIC/PIAPTK. CD/DL/LP
Wizard lizards: transatlantic trio get it together in the desert.
When Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb initially banded together with She & Him singer-songwriter M Ward and Irish musician Mark ‘McKowski’ McCausland (half of Throat with The Coral’s Nick Power), it was to write the first-dance music for a mutual friend’s wedding in Tucson. It’s the perfect origin story for a trio of old-school desert romantics and Geckøs’ debut album takes its cues from the head-on-shoulder sway of Wedding Waltz, drifting through a world of yellowed lace, orange skies and blue hotels with stranger-in-town style. Tarnished brass (River Song) and antique piano (Scoundrel) deepen their sunset tones; Ward supplies the whispery Spanish vocals on Lo Hice and El Techno, while Gelb commands the dark-sky philosophising of Dance Of The Geckos with his sand-blasted charisma. Look under their rock, these consummate storytellers and star-gazers insist, and you never know what you might find.