The Nels Cline Singers: Macroscope

The Nels Cline Singers’ name is a guitarist’s joke: each of Macrsocope’s 10 tracks is an instrumental, unless you count the wordless cries in “Respira” as singing – which may be a guitarist’s joke too. Nels Cline is the stringman in question, a member of the Chicago band Wilco with a distinguished side-career in experimental music, from jazz to the wilder reaches of avant-rock.

All bases are covered in Macroscope, a magnificently diverse yet coherent set of tracks incorporating countrified psychedelia (“The Wedding Band”), punk-rock shredding (“Hairy Mother”) and probing jazz (“Canales Cabeza”). Throughout all drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn keep perfect time to Cline’s masterful variations.

The Nels Cline Singers

Macroscope

(Mack Avenue)