When Nels Cline joined Wilco in 2004, a prevailing sense of possibility accompanied him. The band, after all, had unexpectedly just broken through with its most obtuse album yet, bending Jeff Tweedy’s plaintive songs through experiments at once electrifying and accessible. Cline, it seemed, would further catalyze Wilco’s adventurous advance. He had been an emphatic power source to the great Geraldine Fibbers and an essential piece of the ever eccentric Banyan, not to mention a diligent improviser with a résumé that crisscrossed Wadada Leo Smith and Thurston Moore, Julius Hemphill and Mike Watt.
But during the last two decades, as Wilco has gradually pulled inward and away from those more esoteric textures, Cline has found other contexts for pushing outward—caterwauling guitar-dude jams, strutting trio sets, even a haunting full-length alongside Pauline Oliveros. What’s more, his 2009 move to New York made a proper downtown improviser out of him in his 50s; his subsequent albums for Blue Note have not only broadcast those relationships but also framed him as something of a classic jazz guitarist. He started with a set of standards, advanced to a thoughtful guitar duo, and then, finally, brandished his wonderfully madcap band on 2020’s dazzling Share the Wealth.
Perhaps no Cline project has ever spoken more directly of his range than his latest outfit for Blue Note, the Consentrik Quartet. From the outside, it appears to be an ordinary enough ensemble: a rhythm section countered by guitar and saxophone. All four players, though, arrive at Consentrik with serious bona fides from assorted edges of jazz and new music. Ingrid Laubrock is a daring saxophonist whose works alongside, say, Mary Halvorson and Tyshawn Sorey helped lead to 2020’s brilliant Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt. She’s played often with the drummer Tom Rainey, a dynamo who can drive the kit and dance with it. The same holds for bassist Chris Lightcap, whose credits stretch from the very pleasant to the absolutely aggressive. On their self-titled debut, written by Cline over the last six years but recorded in just three days last year, Consentrik explore inside and beyond their collective past, moving from dreamy ballads to scrambled bedlam to boisterous grooves and back in a little more than an hour.
Flexibility unites the members and the material. They are as exquisite on opener “The Returning Angel,” a kind of group deep-breathing exercise, as they are on closer “Time of No Stars,” where they play like longtime friends sharing old stories and finding a sense of calm in the exchange. “Inner Wall,” though, grows into a group growl, the long bass and saxophone tones around Cline’s chiming guitar tightening like a knot just before Rainey arrives; agitation morphs into rebellion, like a great spiritual jazz anthem. What’s most surprising is the audible fun this quartet has digging into or out of a beat, like when they push against a warped clave rhythm during “The 23” or overrun the meter, retreat back toward it, and ultimately let it fall apart in “Question Marks (The Spot).” These are heady players, but they are reveling here in lifetimes of listening, of sharing scattered enthusiasms in real time.
That much breadth does muddy the identity of Consentrik; no distinct group voice emerges from these 12 tracks, no clear sense of where they hope to head now. But there are enough revelatory moments, both solo and shared, that this lack only suggests itself once the album is done, when its pleasures have finished unspooling. Lightcap’s bass, for instance, becomes the startling hinge of “Slipping Into Something,” which swings from an evening lullaby into a hard-charging bit of funk after he grabs hold of the center. It’s a marvel to hear how many rhythmic strands Rainey can hold at once at the start of “The Bag,” too, his kit-as-playground approach setting up five minutes of ecstatic improvisation. Best of all may be the way Laubrock slips beneath a circuitous Cline guitar lead 100 seconds into “Down Close,” not so much finishing his thought as goading him on. They dart around one another from a distance, a pas de deux from people in opposite corners of a room. I am disappointed every time it ends.
No piece here expresses the musical versatility or narrative possibility of Consentrik better than “Satomi,” a 10-minute diptych written for astounding Deerhoof singer and bassist Satomi Matsuzaki. The first half is a sunny Deerhoof pastiche that slides repeatedly between perfect spans of melody and gnarly dissonance, just like one of this century’s truly singular rock bands. It is a testament to Deerhoof’s continued athleticism that they sound tighter than this crew of ringers.
Rainey slowly pulls the beat apart, leading the band into a meditation on despair, a contemplation of oblivion. Cline composed it to honor Matsuzaki’s steadfast friendship as she endured recent personal challenges. Laubrock and Lightcap seem to sigh through their instruments, as Cline and Rainey treat the meter as if they’re trudging through another day. Laubrock’s saxophone, though, begins to flutter, sending out a little songbird melody as the rest of the band drifts into a drone. It’s a hint of hope, of sublimation after a tough spell. And it’s the moment where I feel, maybe for the first time, like I’m getting to know Cline as a person and storyteller, sending an old friend a postcard with the help of his new crew. It’s a poignant piece on a record where you may not expect such, another suggestion of Cline’s still-new possibilities.
