On his third Blue Note date, guitarist/composer Nels Cline introduces his third ensemble to the label. He and drummer Scott Amendola began the Nels Cline Singers as a trio in 2002. The group has evolved into a sextet here with bassist Trevor Dunn, percussionist Cyro Baptista, saxophonist Skerik, and pianist/keyboardist Brain Marsella. These sessions marked the first time this particular ensemble ever played together. The idea was to record a series of live jams to edit into collaged moments (think Miles Davis and Teo Macero). That changed when over two spring days in a Brooklyn studio, the band played their asses off, and Cline chose to present what transpired exactly as it happened.
Share the Wealth weds musical democracy and balanced experimentation to spacy grooves and rhythmic, textural abstraction. Influences are clear: the electric Davis, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, and John Coltrane. Set opener "Segunda" was composed by Caetano Veloso for Gal Costa. It's a political song juxtaposing slavery, liberation, and Catholicism. Over six-and-a-half minutes, open-tuned guitar and bass drones, Jew's harp, diddley bow, ambient keys, and loose, impressionistic percussion hover. Cline states the melody, but his accents channel Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun." It gradually embraces psych and modal jazz before Skerik and Cline entwine powerfully at the close. "Beam/Signal" offers wafting ambient keys (à la Weather Report's debut album), brushed cymbals, meandering bass, and tenor sax fills. A melodic guitar line binds the band as they weave indie and jazz rock. At 17 minutes, "Stump the Panel" is the wooliest, weirdest thing here. It commences in moody, avant space with disembodied guitar tones, electronic noise, and a circular bass line. Drums and percussion ratchet up the intensity until the band emerges in full-blown skronk. An exchange between Cline and Skerik tempers that flow; the group winds around them in both modal and melodic phrasing before spacy electro-funk keys carry it out. "Princess Phone" is driven by a punchy Fender Rhodes and bluesy wah-wah guitar squall, as the band conjures a dark, humid, massively funky Bitches Brew-esque groove. The whirling mutant funk theme in "Pleather Patrol" is stated by Dunn's nasty, distorted bass line, amid synth bleats, a spiky guitar vamp, and hypnotic percussion. The 16-minute "A Place on the Moon" is simply cinematic, as whispered voices, tenor saxophone, cavernous reverb, and dissonant guitar emerge above off-kilter percussion and ambient keyboard drifts. It eventually gels as refracted synth, power-chord vamps, circular drums, scattershot percussion, and blurry sonic abstraction commingle as a dark, foreboding processional. Closer "Passed Down" is an acoustic theme governed by Skerik's blue saxophone and Cline's vintage Dobro, as tom-toms, shakers, and skeletal keys whisper the set out. Share the Wealth is remarkable for its spontaneity but breathtaking in its focus. This is music-making that balances a desire to move beyond boundaries with canny instinct, an egoless restraint, and a collective openness that discovers what's next together.