Destroy All Nels Cline
Year: 2001
Format: Spotify
Grade: A
Many know Nels Cline as the thin, towering, dexterous guitarist in Wilco, so I came to Destroy All Nels Cline appreciative of his skills, but holy unprepared for this, an improvisational affair that amounts to free jazz with guitars.
The free jazz approach shouldn't be surprising. Cline is a man who did a song for song cover of John Coltrane's Interstellar Space, an experimental affair of another kind.
Cline is one of four guitar players on every track. The ideas and phrases in "Spider Wisdom" have an attention span the size of a gnat, lurching from one chaotic guitar flutter to the next in quick, short blasts.
The longest piece is "As in Life," a five-part suite just shy of 15 minutes in tribute to late jazz pianist Horace Tapscott. It covers a spectrum of emotion, building to a blistering finale.
That's what makes Destroy All Nels Cline worthy of repeated listens. Despite a concerted effort to make this scatterbrained, there is an underlying humanity that makes it enduring.
That said, the average Wilco fan will want a safety belt to make this trip.
Tomorrow's entry: Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left
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