The Nels Cline Singers - "Initiate"
Over the years, I’ve seen Nels Cline play twice with The Geraldine Fibbers, once with Scarnella, and four times as Jeff Tweedy’s right hand guitar man in Wilco. But despite those seven performances, I have no idea as to what Nels Cline’s guitar playing sounds like. He is a guitar slinging zelig. This impression extends to his studio performances as well. If he plays with Mike Watt, D. Boon is reborn; if he contributes to a Miles Davis tribute, he shakes down the rafters like the son of Sonny Sharrock. He’s like Woody Allen’s Leonard Zelig only morphing to fit in with the musicians he’s playing with.
So what I was really looking for when I played Initiate was Nels Cline. He is after all the leader of this double disc recording: one studio, one live. I figured an album by a band bearing his name would sound like Nels Cline. This time his sidemen would be the Zeligs.
Disc One of Initiate opens and closes with ‘Into It’ and Into It (You Turn)’: two versions of the same loopy number that I like to loop even further by playing them back to back with the closing version coming first. ‘Into it (You Turn)’ features bassist Devin Hoff, whereas ‘Into It” sounds like Flying Locus at his buggy best: one of those sound collages where he replicates nature. Cline at times achieves a buggy sound too and a pairing between the two musicians someday seems so natural, especially since both are Californians. ‘Into It’ also sounds like Fripp & Eno toying with a ‘Revolution 9’ loop.
Cline showcases so many different styles that Initiate is almost a crash course in electric guitar sounds. On ‘Red Line to Greenland’ he works his way up to a Hendrixian mode; on ‘King Queen’ he sounds like Carlos Santana jamming with a Morrison-less Doors (probably because of the brittle keyboard solo that gets thrown in (though on second thought it sounds more like Doug Ingle’s organ than Ray Manzarek’s); and on ‘Mercy (Procession)’ he sounds like Sonic Youth: Lee and Thurston combined.
The second track ‘Floored’ is a Miles Davis Jack Johnson-era number. For the first half, Cline sounds like John McLaughlin mimicking percussionist Airto Moreira. Then the band stops on a dime. When the singers in The Nels Cline Singers pick up the beat again, Cline switches guitar gears: he’s Frank Zappa taking a solo. And that’s when it hit me. Nels Cline’s playing is all about sound, not melody. He never sounds like George Harrison or Eric Clapton or even Ivan Kral.
But Nels Cline is only a third of The Nels Cline Singers and I’m not giving the singers their due. I know next to nothing about them so I asked Hellbomb contributor Anthony Kaboom for an assist. This is what he sent me, never knowing I’d weave it into this review:
“…- the other two guys collaborate and are very much part of the band. They are Scott Amendola on drums and Devin Hoff on bass. Scott is arguably the more "famous" - his own Scott Amendola Band has released four albums - he drums for Noe Venable, and was Carla Bozulich's drummer on the Red Headed Stranger album (but not the tour).
“Scott is kind of a big deal... in the same way Nels was a big deal in the avant-indie-underground jazz scene before Wilco (or even before Watt) - a huge part of the San Francisco music scene that alternates between jazz, experimental and mainstream. Devin plays bass for Good for Cows, Redressers, and 7 Year Rabbit Cycle and has released at least one solo album.”
Hoff’s the featured player on the Pastel-colored fusion numbers. It’s the type of acoustic jazz fusion that jazz musicians play and by Pastel, I’m referring to bassist Ron Carter’s album from the 1970s, which is really my only reference point for trying to explain them. At times they veer off into Californian jam territory: the sort of jams that Jerry Garcia would probably have liked to have trucked.
The live disc is a free-for-all dragging down the number of Hellbombs I’m giving Initiate. I want to ignore the live album and give Initiate 8.6 but it is part of the official release. Still, let’s give Nels Cline his due. It seems like bands like to jam again and play their instruments, which is a welcome revival. I remember all too well that period about ten years ago when every band starred whining twenty-somethings who couldn’t play their instruments; even worse, they were singing greeting card lyrics. But there was Nels Cline on some, oftentimes obscure stage wailing away on his six strings making ears bleed, reminding us what the electric guitar could sound like.
