New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Guitarist Nels Cline debuts a new band with the April 13 release of Currents, Constellations (Blue Note) featuring The Nels Cline 4, an intrepid unit that builds upon Cline's acclaimed collaboration with guitarist Julian Lage by adding the fierce and versatile rhythm section of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey.
Today the band released the album's second single "Swing
Ghost '59," which is now available to stream or download. Stereogum also just premiered the video for "Swing
Ghost '59," calling it a "skronking, shredding, shapeshifting good time."
Rolling Stone praised the album's first single "Imperfect 10" as a "a funk strut filled with harmonized electric guitar leads, double-bass thumps and cymbals."
The Nels Cline 4 will celebrate the album's release with a sold out show at (le) poisson rouge in New York City on April 16. A European tour will follow, including a newly-added show in London on April 24, with Cline joined by Lage, Rainey, and bassist
Jorge Roeder.
Of all the rich and varied projects guitarist Cline has pursued since his emergence as a leader in the late 1980s, his two-guitar duo with Lage, documented on the 2014 Mack Avenue album Room, ranks among the most special. "When Julian and I started playing together it kicked my ass hard," Cline told JazzTimes around the time of Room's release. "At the same time it inspired me and refreshed my soul." Lage, for his part, declared he had "found his people" playing with Cline: "At last I found a scenario where … you could be free and adventurous, you could utilize sound and be extremely melodic and evocative."
"Even in the earliest days of the duo we used to say, 'I wonder what we'd do if we ever had a rhythm section,'" Cline recalls. In 2016 he decided to find out by inviting Colley and Rainey to collaborate with he and Lage during a residency at The Stone in New York City. "I brought in a few themes and we just kind of went for it. Everyone was enthusiastic about continuing the work."
Known as the lead guitarist of
Wilco since 2004, and one of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists," Cline is coming off the success of his 2016 Blue Note debut Lovers, a "quietly ravishing double-album" (NY Times) featuring Cline with a large ensemble conducted and arranged by Michael Leonhart that was "wildly inventive in its watercolored way" (Rolling Stone). On Currents, Constellations Cline embraces a sparser but edgier instrumentation, which serves the adventurous thrust of the music, brimming as it does with raw energy and wild beauty.
The track listing for Currents, Constellations is as follows:
1. Furtive (Nels Cline)
2. Swing
Ghost '59 (Nels Cline)
3. Imperfect 10 (Nels Cline)
4. As Close As That (Nels Cline)
5. Amenette (Nels Cline)
6. Temporarily (Carla Bley)
7. River Mouth (Parts 1 & 2) (Nels Cline)
8. For Each, A Flower (Nels Cline)
2018 Tour Dates:
April 16 - New York, NY - (le) poisson rouge
April 20 - Geneva, CH - AMR - Sud des Alpes
April 21 - Oslo, NO - Nasjonal Jazzscene, Victoria
April 22 - Liverpool, UK - Invisible Wind Factory
April 24 - London, UK - Vortex
April 25 - Berlin, DE - ZigZag Club
April 26 - Madrid, ES - Sala Clamores
April 27 - Munich, DE - Unterfahrt Jazzclub
April 28 - Ferrara, IT - Torrione San
Giovanni - Jazz Club Ferrara
April 30 - Istanbul, TU - Babylon Bomonti Istanbul
May 2 - Kortrijk, BE -Belgium De Kreun
May 4 - Liége, BE - La Cité Miroir
