The Nels Cline Singers Share The Wealth 2LP

This item not eligible for any further discount offers!

One Of TAS' Ten Best Jazz Albums of 2020!

TAS Rated 5/5 Music, 4.5/5 Sonics in the February 2021 Issue of The Absolute Sound!

Michael Fremer Rated 8/11 Music, 8/11 Sonics!

The third Blue Note album by guitarist and Wilco bandmember Nels Cline features an expanded edition of his long-running project The Nels Cline Singers with saxophonist Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsella, bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Scott Amendola and percussionist Cyro Baptista. A dynamic double album created from spontaneous music-making that brims with swirling, evocative soundscapes and uninhibited explorations.

"We recorded all these jams with the idea that I was going to take tiny fragments of them and create this kind of cut-and-paste, collaged, psychedelic record like an Os Mutantes record or something crazy like that. But when I listened back to these jams, I liked them so much that I wanted to keep them intact. And some of the most startling transitions, they're not edits. They just happened in the course of these long improvisations in the studio, almost like magic."

If you know Nels Cline's guitar playing only from Wilco and his previous Blue Note releases, you might not be prepared for the unified, psychedelic, astral-projection nature of Share the Wealth. But even if you know his early experimental work in SoCal's jazz avant-garde, you'll find surprises and thrills in this rolling-and-tumbling-in-space amalgam of prog- and shoe-gaze rock, jazz-fusion, and jam-band skronk. The music embraces early Weather Report; tropicalia, Parliament-Funkadelic; post-Bitches Brew Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter; 1970s Chilean Nuevo Canción; whipsaw guitar solos and melodic musings; hummable motifs and thrashing free improvisation. Electronic enhancements abound, adding aura, depth, and distortion to Cline's guitars, Scott Amendola's bass, Skerik's tenor saxophone, Brian Marsella's keyboards, and Cyro Baptista's 'percussion universe' and vocalizations. These sonic realms shape-shift pleasingly in different listening environments, from audiophile headphones and dedicated spaces with high-end speakers to the kitchen and the car.

With its eclectic, fast-paced mix of musical genres and quick-shift track-by-track instrumental line-up, Share the Wealth is about as much musical and well-recorded sonic fun as one can have on 2 LPs.