Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Nels Cline Singers Played Le Poisson Rouge - Pictures, Review

Last night at the Village's favorite avant garde music club, we caught The Nels Cline Singers delivering the first of two sets of the night. The band is on tour for their new record Initiate, and it was the first time we'd seen them play in a couple of years. As always, they were ridiculously tight, and had a rapport that made itself immediately clear on stage.


The set was comprised of a good mix of new and old material, with a number of selections from the new record, including "Floored", "Forge", "King Queen", and the Sonic Youth-aping "Thurston County". Interestingly, the set felt like the most rock inspired we've ever seen from the trio, with bassist Devon Hoff donning an electric bass for much of the set.

Interestingly, it also seemed that the audience was most taken with the "rock" numbers, which surprised us. Most of the Cline shows we've seen on the West coast were attended by purely by jazz aficionados, but maybe that's changing. Given Cline's involvement in Wilco, it wouldn't shock us if he was getting a new fan base, and the crowd last night seemed most inspired by some of drummer Scott Amendola's most straight ahead beats.

The set was apparently cut short (according to Cline) by "too much jamming", but that didn't stop the band from bringing out some special guests for the last couple of numbers. Yuka Honda joined the band on keyboards, and Sean Lennon (introduced only as "our friend Sean" played percussion. The two served to fill out the band's sound even more, and helped to wrap up a fantastic set.

Initiate is out now on Cryptogramaphone

Many more pictures in the HAD Archive, including the Singers' youngest fan!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

The Youngest Fan! Bellamy Dune Nofsinger! 10 month old son of Jenny Scheinman and Andrew Nofsinger! Btw Jenny will be playing with Mischief & Mayhem (Nels Cline, Jim Black and Todd Sickafoose) July 13- 18 at The Village Vanguard. 6 nights, 12 sets!

Patrick, and chance of geting a copy of that photo to document Bellamy's first rock concert?