Given the myriad — there is no other word — configurations that Nels Cline has worked in, up to and including his standing membership in Wilco, it's not surprising he's found a philosophical center for how he approaches that diversity.
"The modus operandi for me all these years is it's that the people who I'm playing with dictate what it will sound like," Cline tells Guitar Player. "The aesthetics come from them. My music sounds better because it's transformed by these great players."
A Los Angeles native who these days resides in upstate New York with his wife, Yuka Hondo, of Cibo Matto, Cline has worked with many such performers. They include the Nels Cline Singers, the Nels Cline Trio and collaborations with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Elliott Sharp, Henry Keiser and scores of others.
Now Cline has a new posse, Consentrik Quartet, which includes longtime cohorts Tom Rainey on drums and bassist Chris Lightcap — with whom Cline had already worked with in the trio — along with saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, Rainey's wife, who plays counterpoints to Cline's guitar. The four came together about seven years ago for a show John Zorn put together in Brooklyn, which in turn inspired Cline to write material specific for the configuration. He did some of it during the pandemic lockdown, and the group's new self-titled, 12-track debut, funded with a grant from Ars Nova in Philadelphia, marks Cline's fourth release with Blue Note Records
"I guess you can say it's more of a jazz group." Cline acknowledges, "and I can address more of a kind of stylistic diversity — which is my thing, I guess — with these players. They're not only masterful but they have an elasticity that can take it anywhere, really."
Consentrik Quartet starts gently on "The Returning Angel," mellow and measured with Cline's ringing notes and Laubrock's gauzy drone. But the album runs a gamut, from the shuffle bop of "Surplus" to the grooving exposition of "The 23," the sustained, hushed tonalities of "Inner Wall" and the brassy punch of "Down Close." "Question Marks the Spot" and the nine-and-a-half minute "Satomi," meanwhile, find the ensemble working through screaming avant improvisations. The idea is exchange and interplay, sounding spontaneous and fluid even inside structures Cline created for the troupe.
And, by the way, it’s a whole lot of fun to listen to.
Cline will take Consentrik Quartet on the road this spring, for eight dates starting March 30 at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. And from his conversation with us, it sounds like it's a group he plans to add to his happily overflowing creative plate.
Take us back to that night in Brooklyn when you first tried out Consentrik Quartet?
John Zorn asked various people to play at the Stone in Brooklyn, Crown Heights. I played two nights there, the first with this trio with Tom and Chris, and the second night we added Ingrid, who I admire, just as Laubrock, and her duo with Tom has been an ongoing thing for quite awhile. She's super busy. We just improvised that set and it was really fun.
And then I got a grant to write music for a quartet that would play gigs around the eastern United States after I wrote the music. Then the pandemic hit.
That just gave you more time to spend writing the music, though, right?
[laughs] To be frank and candid, I wasn't feeling super inspired during the lockdown; I was feeling quite the opposite — I would say depressed is probably a good, broad term. I wasn't feeling empowered, aesthetically, to be some heavy duty, creative dude. I was thinking I should be doing something else, like working in a soup kitchen or doing something that would help people.
But I had wanted to write for this group with Ingrid, just improvise with them. When the grant first came along I had a different quartet, so I had to go back and tell them, "It's a different band, is that Okay?” And they said it was fine.
What did you have in mind for Consentrik?
I wanted the vocabulary to be very open and free, 'cause I like playing free music, and also sort of more chamber jazzish — although that's not exactly the way it wound up. Kind of what I've always done is to get close to what I'm imagining in my inner ear, but also to highly consider the musicians who are going to perform the music and make sure there's room for their personalities to emerge, that it's basically an enjoyable experience. That way the music sounds better, because it's going to be transformed by these great players.
How did you bend or adjust the vision for your own personality, as a player, into that equation?
The thing that's unusual about these pieces for me is the guitar parts are not improvised. I had these very specific guitar parts and compositional elements that I needed to fold the rest of the band into. It took me a really long time to figure out what to do with the band in something like "Time of No Sirens,” particularly with the saxophone an how much of the melodic content was going to be played on the saxophone.
It sort of worked out after really kind of an amazingly long time — two years or something — that I had actually written very little material for Ingrid on that piece, where she just comes in at very specific times. The improvised moment at the beginning, that's the only improvised part I play; everything else is completely written.
So that was different for me, and that took a lot of thought. I was just trying to get my head around it.
Did you have an easier time elsewhere?
Other pieces, like "The 23," I thought were kind of lightweight and maybe not worth playing, but everybody liked it, so we played it, and it's a pretty groovy tune. When this quartet plays songs with that groovy vibe, like on "Slipping Into Something," that ends up reminding me of John Scofield or something. I don't know why I wrote songs like that except I come up with them and they might be fun to play, so we do it.
But, honestly, when I know I'm going to make an album, I do want it to go different places. So, for example, "Inner Wall," probably the last piece I wrote, was written around these sort of very arid, spacious guitar parts, but also I wanted to have that volcanic drone at the end because I felt like the record needed it in terms of its overall palette, if you will. So that was written with the album in mind, unlike some of the other pieces like "Time of No Sirens" or "The 23" or "Satomi." They just kind of presented themselves to me as I was sitting around playing guitar and thinking about this and that.
What are the challenges for you in playing with a saxophonist?
It's not that different. One of the things that's unusual is I've been avoiding a saxophone presence in my own music. The Lovers record [2016] obviously has saxophones but also flutes and clarinets and trumpets, so that's a little different. It became ridiculously obvious to me when Gregg Bendian and I did Interstellar Space Revisited [1999], our version of the Coltrane and Rashied Ali duets, that an overdriven electric guitar is not only similar to tenor saxophone but also has the same range. So when I play with a tenor saxophone there's that potential of immediate symbiosis, sonically and melodically, that puts me in the mind of so many classic guitar/tenor saxophone combinations that I've listened to. For some reason, I just decided it was time now.
Do we call this a jazz record?
It's my kind of jazz record. Like, "House of Steam" — is that a jazz piece? I dunno. Is it fusion? What is fusion? Some of the songs kind of rock out; "The 23" and "House of Steam" are pretty rockin'. But I don't know what this word jazz means. I don’t know if it ever meant anything much. I'm not a real jazz person; I'm a jazz fan who plays music I think reflects my love of jazz, but I don't consider myself to be a jazz exemplar.
"Satomi" is the epic here. How'd it come about?
"Satomi" is, stylistically, not exact what I had in mind when I was first thinking of writing for the quartet. Satomi Matsuzaki [of Deerhoof] is a dear friend, and she was going through some deep shit with family illness and death during the pandemic. "Satomi" was me paying tribute to a wonderful person and friend to me and my wife, but also trying to paint a portrait of her struggle at the time.
To me the first part is my obvious Deerhoof tribute; it's supposed to reflect Satomi reflect Satomi's incredible stage presence and energy and the stylistic aspects of this band Deerhoof, who I adore and have for quite awhile, and we're all friends.
But then the second part, which is more like a chamber piece, is more the emotional inflections of my concern and just my musical way of saying, um... “I care.” [laughs] Once again, I didn't know how it would go down with the band, and playing it, it's been embraced, I guess you can say. I think Ingrid thinks it's the hit single on the record, the first part 'cause it's got earworm that just gets right in there and you can't get it out of your head.
How much change did the songs undergo as the ensemble touch was put on them?
The only one that comes to mind, and certainly not in a dramatic way, is "House of Steam." That was written during the lockdown, kind of a raga-jazz piece, if you well — one of my droners. It's preceded by what used to be untitled for a long time, this ballad called "Allende," which is obviously derived from all kinds of what might be associated with Latin world balladry and also music of particular people like Paul Motian's earlier records and Charlie Haden's work, stuff I cut my teeth on that I still love.
But in "House of Steam" it was hard to figure out how long everything should be and how much interaction there should be — whether I should solo, whether Ingrid should solo. We end up playing simultaneously on the whole thing, which made it shorter than it was initially, more condensed. The written material is about the same, though; there were a couple of melodic changes I made 'cause I got the ranges wrong on tenor saxophone and made it too high. But the structure and length of it went through various permutations before we had it.
How do you tend to handle the dual roles of composer and guitars, in general?
I don't go around thinking of myself as a composer so much. I have been writing since I was very young, or at least organizing. The guitarist in me is not comfortable at this point. I would love to make a record with no guitar solos, and I kinda did on Share the Wealth [2020] with the Singers. I had to add a couple of guitar solos to it; that recording was kind of an experiment, and to this day that particular lineup of the band has never played a live gig.
So I guess as I've gotten older I've become a little bit too self-conscious and sheepish about my guitar soloing. I don't want to hear me that much. And I am confronting this. [laughs] I have to get over this shit, but it's been dogging me for awhile.
Does being part of Wilco, which is yours but not all yours, help with that at all?
I don't think it's helpful at all, honestly. When I'm out playing concerts with Wilco I'm not uncomfortable; I'm in this element. It's a mindset that is extremely familiar to me. I know what everybody's gonna bring to it. It's just a different dynamic. But in terms of playing, complete improvisation is the only thing I really feel comfortable doing. And that doesn't have to mean soloing; it can rarely mean soloing. It's just that surrender to the moment and your own reaction to what you're hearing and what you think you can contribute.
I'm comfortable with that part. It's just the overt soloing that feels a little bit like a weight. If I'm relaxed, it's not a problem. I need some tricks — and it's not more Mescal. [laughs]
There's also the frustration at this point that my physical state is not as acutely responsive as it once was when I was younger. So I'm just trying to figure out how to get my hands to obey me, which was never a problem before. Now I'm an older dude, and I'm starting to notice things. I'm trying to do certain stretching, exercises, all kinds of different things to open up the neck and shoulder areas I've been punishing all these years.
Did Consentrik Quartet steer you towards any different gear?
One difference, which is on "Inner Wall" and "Down Close" was I played my modern, customized Collings 130, which has flatwounds on them — the first time I've recorded with flatwounds in my entire life. That guitar, which is beautiful, was customized by my friend Palmieri, who's a real pickup wizard and jazz wizard. We're the same age and share a lot of stylistic, aesthetic musical moments in our growing up. The guitar has a bone bridge on it; I wanted to have more of the acoustic properties be audible than you get with the P90s, which had a little too much high output. I always worry about 60-cycle hum in recordings, which means I have to be careful when I used my Jazzmaster, 'cause they hum like crazy.
I also brought in a recent acquisition; it's a 1966 Guild Thunderbird, which is of course a really cool-looking guitar. The neck profile's a little hard for me. The strings are a little too close together for my comfort, and it's got a very flat fingerboard. I'm not very neck-sensitive, but in some way this guitar is a little more sensitive for me to play because of that. It's also a hum-canceling situation, and there are a brilliant variety of tones available — not as many as on a Jaguar, but close, and with a much different tumbrel signature sound. I used that on one or two songs.
What about pedals?
The usual stuff for me. I have a much smaller board 'cause New York City is not a place to be carrying around tons and tons of gear. A Moya volume pedal. The overdrive was the Interstellar Audio Devices Octanaut; it's an overdrive pedal I was given by somebody who works with Widespread Panic, who gave it to my guitar tech at a festival and said I should try it. It has an insane amount of gain, kind of scary how loud it can be. I always have my goofy little Boss CS3 compressor pedal, which I probably should be weaning myself off of after 30 years. Before I didn't have the Chris Benson delay, which I use all the time now; he gave it to me, and it's marvelous.
And also on there is my failed signature distortion pedal called Goo. Tone Concepts made it, and they don't exist anymore — for non-business reasons, really. But Goo may re-emerge. A Goo 2 could be in the offing. I used the Plus pedal from Gamechanger Audio, at one point on "Down Close" and the chords on "Inner Wall," but it's a real pain in the ass to travel with. It's heavy and clunky, but it's a brilliant pedal — and now I'm gonna have to take it when we go play live. [laughs]
On the board there's also an EarthQuaker Devices Aqueduct for various sounds of vibrato. I don't know if I actually used that on the record, but it's always on the board and I use it all the time with Wilco.
Are you considering Consentrik Quartet a going concern?
Yes, I would like to prolong this. We'll be playing Big Ears at the end of March in Knoxville, as well as with the Singers, so I'll be busy. I think I'm gonna sit in with Jenny Scheinman's band there, too, 'cause I'm on a couple tracks on her record [All Species Parade]. Then Consentrik plays around the East a little bit, and I'm hoping to hit it again in the fall.
Is another Wilco album planned?
Not yet, but I know there are plans afoot. I think we're gonna get all this touring under our belt first, then we'll find out what Jeff [Tweedy] is thinking. He's always got a bevy of songs and ideas, more than two bands can accommodate. March will be 21 years for me [in the band]. It's kind of amazing for me and Patrick [Sansone] to be the "new guys."
Has it changed much for you during that time?
I don't know if it changes. Not really. I think I'm always trying to make the songs happen the way the song's asking to be played; that's been my goal since the first year. I'm using mostly the same stuff and trying to get as many different, appropriate founds as possible, but even the changes are pretty subtle. At this point we pretty much know what we're doing.
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