It’s been some time since Nels Cline has minded the ongoing project that bears his name; Macroscope from 2014 was the last time we’ve heard from the Nels Cline Singers. But he couldn’t have hardly been busier in the period since then: he’s done various collaborations (notably with Julian Lage), led a chamber orchestra through a set of lush standards, and guested on other people’s records. Oh yeah, he also plays lead guitar for Wilco.
But the Nels Cline Singers is his musical home and after six years, it was time to go home.
Cline returns to his Singers just as seemingly determined to make no music representative of the Nels Cline Singers, because as before, anything goes with this band. When he reconvened with co-founding drummer Scott Amendola and longtime bassist Trevor Dunn, he made a big change in the band that guaranteed that the resultant, double-disc product Share the Wealth was not going to resemble the prior Singers records too much. The Singers blew up from a trio to a septet by adding percussionist Cyro Baptista (who guested on Macroscope), keyboard player Brian Marsella and saxophonist Skerik.
Nels Cline had some cut-n-paste ideas going into making this album but jettisoned the pastiche tactic when the source material for this — the jams — were just too good to mess with. Many of these songs start out setting forth impressions and contours instead of tricky changes and developing in directions not necessarily anticipated but always yielding nice surprises. Oftentimes, these guys just let the momentum carry them. Why screw around with that?
Only one time do they play someone else’s song and even there, the expanded group just lets the spirit carry them. Their cover of “Segunda” by Brazilian singer-songwriter icon Caetano Veloso floats on an easygoing groove and a trancelike, single chord. There is a slow-stewing buildup of momentum and Cline trades licks with Skerik and Marsella on electric piano, but nothing ever rises above a simmer. “Beam/Spiral” is far gentler — arid, even — wielding a Weather Report vibe. Somewhere in the middle is a transition and then another one that moves the song into rock territory. It’s that riff that rises up to a triumphal arc where Cline, Skerik and Marsella feed off each other. Barren textures also formulate “Nightstand,” led by Skerik’s lonely sax. Cline plays acoustic guitar on a rustic folk tune in the style of Chilean nueva canción music for “Passed Down,” with Skerik’s lyrical sax taking the spot where a vocalist could have easily gone.
However, Nels Cline never goes for long being straightforward and that approach ends with epic-length piece “Stump The Panel.” Though it, too, begins meekly, Amendola kicks off the first little salvo of rage and Cline engages with Skerik on a maniacally repeating figure before peeling away and everyone going off untethered. That harshness gives way to an uneasy tenderness and then Amendola and Dunn’s slow funk ride is peppered with Cline’s wonderfully woozy guitar effects followed by a series of truly trippy, Alice In Wonderland passages.
Nearly as freewheeling is another quarter-hour-plus track “A Place On The Moon,” beginning with alien soundscapes and some industrial effects scattered about. At some point, a rumbling groove materializes and dissipates and reappears; Skerik likewise appears and disappears and Cline and Marsella toss all kinda otherworldly sounds against the wall. It’s a straight-up jam that ultimately goes nowhere but the reward is in the journey.
There are grooves galore on this record. Dunn gets his Bootsy Collins on for “The Pleather Patrol” and Amendola thunderous kick drum answers that call with everyone else along for the ride until things goes off into an avant-spacy direction à la Mwandishi-era Herbie Hancock. Cline’s uber-tasty guitar work sets the mood for the smooth, gliding “Headdress,” and “Princess Phone” rides on Amendola’s unbreakable backbeat as Marsella’s heated Rhodes rambles trades off with Cline’s wah-wah’d Terry Kath-isms.
The expanded Nels Cline Singers stays true to course by not charting a course, and whatever expectations you can make about a new NCS release, Share the Wealth exceeds them all.
Share the Wealth is coming November 13, 2020 from Blue Note Records.
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