I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: February 10, 2024] Nels Cline’s Consentrik Quartet

I was excited about this show for a couple of reasons.  I love Nels Cline’s work in Wilco, but I never get to ficus on him because there’s so much else to see in Wilco.  Plus, this was a 3PM matinee show!  I could go to a show and see a great band and be home for dinner!

Well, then Scott Thompson announced a show that evening, so I guess I would be very busy on this Saturday.

I was also excited because I had never been to Solar Myth before, but I’d heard it was a great venue.  Well, little did I realize that Solar Myth is Boot and Saddle!  The venue has been remodeled into more of a coffee shop 9although they do serve wine as well).  They sell jazz records, the bathrooms are less weird and there’s even more room by the door to the venue.

Best of all though is that they didn’t change anything in the performance room.  Our show was seated and I feel like most shows there are seated.  But honestly that just gives you much better sight lines.

So the Consentrik Quartet was introduced by someone from Ars Nova, the non-profit arts company that puts on a lit of experimental shows in New York and Philly.  They bought Boot & Saddle and basically turned it into an experimental jazz club.  Which sounds dire, but this show was packed (all three shows at Solar Myth had sold out).  he told us that contributions to Solar Myth helped Nels Cline get a grant to make music during the pandemic.  So tickets to this show were basically there to keep music like this going.  Pretty cool.

The Consentrik Quartet consists of Nels Cline (Guitar), Ingrid Laubock (saxophone), Chris Lightcap (bass) and Tom Rainey (drums).  The music was 100% experimental jazz, with some parts that were catchy and swinging and other parts that were noisy and skronking with wild sax soloing and crazy chords from Nels.

Each musician was excellent.  Chris Lightcap had the least work to do aside from holding everything together as it spiraled in all directions.  His bass was grounding and perfect, sometimes bowed with occasional runs of his own, but mostly just perfectly placed upright bass notes.

Tom Rainey seemed like he was also fairly minimal, until you realized that he was doing a ton of stuff, only relatively quietly.  There was no showing-off double bass mania, it was brushed drum heads and stick clicking and once you became fully aware of him it was hard to stop watching him.  He even got to do a little solo as an introduction to “The Bag” and it was pretty spectacular.

I haven’t really enjoyed saxophone in a while–I simply tend to find it doesn’t add what I like to a song.  But Ingrid Laubock snapped me out of that.  Her playing was excellent–melodic when needed but not afraid to go wild with some frenetic soloing and occasional moments of holding one note for a long time.  She also frequently played harmony lines with Nels and their sounds were so similar it was easy to forget that they were a stringed and wind instrument playing together.

And then there was Nels.  I don’t mean to put him on a pedestal, but he really can do pretty much whatever he wants.  He played bizarre chords the likes of which Id never seen before.  He played crazy noisy solos.  He played beautiful melodic solos.  And, he did what every great band leader does, he sat back and admired his fellow players when they had a solo.

The set definitely wasn’t for everyone.  Nels tends to drift into some wild musical areas, but I enjoyed the whole set.  It ran about 90 minutes and that was plenty.

I don’t think I’d go to see another “solo” show by Nels Cline, but I’m really glad I went to this one.  And yes, if he puts out this collection of songs I’d certainly listen to it.

SETLIST

1. Time of No Sirens
2. Questions Marks the Spot
3. The Twenty-Three
4. The Bag
5. Satomi
6. Surplus
7. Just Cuz
8. House of Steam