Suoni Review - The Nels Cline Singers

For its variety and energy alone this was an entertaining show. The Nels Cline Singers are all over the shop. They covered too much musical ground for me to talk about with any real insight. Jazz, free jazz, rock ballads, there were classical, post rock and ambient elements. I think what bound these elements was the three piece (Nels Cline, guitar. Scott Amendola, double. Devin Hoff, drums and electronics) being really, really good. The band was precise, inventive and energetic.

As a guitarist the man himself is pretty creative in all aspects. At times minimal, at times subtle and concerned with texture and tone, especially with use of looping and pedals and hitting the guitar with various things. He was an amazing presence accompanying Carla Bozulich, with both Evangelista the night before and Scarnella the openers on this night. The Singers however are for the most part about the guitar as lead instrument. With that in mind there was the occasional outbreak of free jazz which made me uncomfortable. That’s right, free jazz makes me uncomfortable and I’ve got to be honest so do serious chops. To his credit Cline was able to make these things sometimes interesting sometimes bearable for me.

My favorite pieces of the night were the more minimal ones that saw the band working as one to create swelling textures, crescendos, no wave come downs and dinosaur like psych rock. The Nels Cline singers are really good at this stuff.

The first piece, which Cline back announced “tonight we’ll call it Build i guess…for obvious reasons” was a stand out for me. The sparse melody had become epic by the end. I’m not easily won over by crescendos but I’d like to track down a recording of this. (Apparently it was mostly unrecorded material).

The last song began with ambient swells, bleeps and double bass caws. It took off, then took a turn or two until at its apex it was a space truckin’ monster. The seated front half of the audience (who annoyingly took up all the good standing space) gave a deserved standing o.