Guitarist NELS KLINE to Release CD on Cryptogramophone June 26

Press release
Source: DL Media

The NELS CLINE Singers - Draw Breath

Draw Breath is the third CD from The NELS CLINE Singers, CLINE's working trio of bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola. While the name should be taken ironically, the three have developed over the last several years to the point where they can conjure a virtual chorus of voices from their respective instruments.

Since the late '70s, NELS CLINE has been an integral part of the west coast experimental music scene, nimbly bridging jazz and rock-based sounds and working with a panoply of artists from Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden and ROVA, to Carla Bozulich, Thurston Moore and Mike Watt. His latest release was New Monastery, a prescient tribute to oft-overlooked pianist Andrew Hill, who passed away in April at the age of 75.

Since the mid-'90s, CLINE has been the lead guitarist for Wilco, and has found a new improv partner in that group's drummer Glenn Kotche, who appears on Draw Breath's epic noise-into-lushness closer, "Squirrel of God."

Wilco's twang-rock influence arises once or twice on the new CD, but then again, so does virtually every other influence upon which CLINE draws. The incisive power chords of "Confection" displays how effective a rock band the Singers can be, even if the title subjects their pop leanings to some knowing self-mockery. There's nothing tongue-in-cheek about Hoff's elegant bowed-bass solo, or CLINE's delicate acoustic playing on the lyrical, folksy "The Angels of Angels" and the gentle,introspective pair of "Recognize" ballads.

Recently named a "Guitar God" by Rolling Stone magazine, CLINE is renowned as a mind-blowing shredder (Jazz Times has referred to him as "The world's most dangerous guitarist"), but Draw Breath opens with a marvel of self-control, the seven-minute "Caved-In Heart Blues". As the title suggests, the tune is an impressionistic extension of the blues vernacular that references and endeavors to extend the blues form while still possessing a dark mood that the blues so often is born from.

The pent-up energy suppressed in that brooding beginning erupts on "Attempted," as CLINE's wiry, ragged spasms are parried by Amendola's relentless battery, while Hoff fluidly slaloms through the spaces between before setting off on his own sure-footed solo, accompanied only by occasional car-crash interjections from his partners. Equally breathless is "Mixed Message", with CLINE's clean, cascading lines sounding something like Pat Metheny caught in an avalanche.

The album's centerpiece, though, may be the 16-minute "An Evening At Pops'." Pop is actually drummer Scott Amendola, and the tune is a not to his recently having become a father. "Evening At Pops' unleashes a lengthy, dense torrent of noise, with each member of the trio overcoming and giving ground to the others in turn, eventually gives way to a momumentally heavy slab of riffing, besting The Melvins at their own game. This all decays into a burbling swirl of electronics. After all that, the relatively tender double shot of "Angel of Angels" and "Recognize I" comes as quite a relief.