Dirty Baby
Guitarist Nels Cline has played with saxophonist Julius Hemphill *and* Willie Nelson, Charlie Haden *and* Wilco. And on 2010’s *Dirty Baby*, the ever-exploring Cline pushes himself into places he’s never been before. Conceived by poet/producer David Breskin, the double-album is a musical response to two sets of paintings by the Los Angeles-based pop artist Ed Ruscha. Cline leads a pair of large bands — mostly made up of fellow Angelenos, including Jon Brion, Vinny Golia, and Nels’ twin brother, Alex Cline — through pieces that incorporate improvisation. The first album, or “Side A,” is made up of a single, six-part suite that gradually moves from acoustic Americana to music that brings to mind the electric jam sessions that Miles Davis led in the early ‘70s. “Side B” takes a very different approach: it consists of 33 works, many shorter than two minutes, which jump from style to style. John Zorn’s postmodern pastiches come to mind, but “Side B” has a sense of pacing and wholeness that doesn’t leave the listener feeling so tossed about. Cline seems to feel at home in all the places he takes us.
It is easy to see why guitarist Nels Cline calls DIRTY BABY the most challenging work of his career.
Nels Cline's liner notes to Dirty Baby do such a good job of providing context that I'm fighting temptation to basically retype them.
A suite-like structure offers acoustic guitar sounds under lazy harmonicas, building to slow funk beats, dirgey, vocal-like melodies, metallic improv and ambient hums, says <strong>John Fordham</strong>