Music and dance in the Twin Cities at the Walker Art Center continues to not only be the best source for witnessing and experiencing incredible talent from around the world but also remains as one of

There’s intuition, a splash of magic and some greatness of delivery here between Watt, Silver Jew Tim Barnes, John Dietrich of Deerhoof and Nels Cline collaborator Thollem McDonas. It’s no American indie indulgence, it’s the straight strange path straight out of standard sound and off, beautiful and ugly into somewhere other.

During Wilco’s performance at the St. Augustine Amphitheater in St Augustine, FL last night, guitarist Nels Cline brought out Duane Allman’s ’57 gold-top Les Paul guitar for one of the band’s marquee tunes. Prior to the song “Impossible Germany,” Cline switched over to the f...

Located in the always-growing Gowanus/Park Slope area, about a .4 mile walk from Union Hall, Shapeshifter Lab (18 Whitwell Place) is a new 4200 square foot performance space...."this newly renovated performance space hosts the world's most innovative artists who...

by D-BO • May 2012 Ava Menodza is a busy guitarist. When she’s not throwing in her singular blend of free-jazz/blues-fingerstyle/controlled rock-debris with musicians like guitar paladin Nels Cline, synth-pop fringer Dominique Leone, or collabing on film scores with international East Bay heroes tUnE-yArDs , she’s an essential piece of a burgeoning Bay Area free-rock music scene. All it really takes is one good listen to know Ava’s not just onto something, but has been perfecting her craft for quite some time. While not exactly a secret in San Francisco and Oakland, anyone with a taste for ...

Ahead of its official release next week, Rufus Wainwright's new album Out of the Game is streaming online. The album, a collaborative effort with producer Ronson">Mark Ronson, features contributions from Wainwright's sister Martha, Sean Lennon, The Dap Kings and Nels Cline. Rufus himself describes the record as his most pop-centric effort so far...have a listen for yourself right now from the link below. Source Link:  Anti Music Attached Image(s):  Rufus Wainwright

A provocative mating of art and music, Dirty Baby [Cryptogramophone] is guitarist and composer Nels Cline and poet and producer David Breskin's re-contextualization of Ed Ruscha's "Censor Strip" paintings. The lavish double-CD box set includes more than 90 minutes of new music by Cline scored for two large ensembles, paired booklets with reproductions of 66 of Ruscha’s pictures, and liner notes by Cline in a third booklet that also includes photos from the sessions. Supporting musicians include some of L.A.'s greatest instrumentalists and improvisers.

Lee Ranaldo – 'Between The Times And The Tides' (UK Release: 19 March '12) // Words: Simon Opie Band chemistry is a powerful influence and being a founder member of Sonic Youth , with a thirty one year history must be heavily addictive. Of course it wasn’t enough to keep Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon together and so maybe SY is no more? Undeterred, another co-founder, Lee Ranaldo has released what he somewhat mystifyingly calls his first real solo album, perhaps in an attempt to escape the ghosts of the past. Recruiting a talented bunch of cohorts including Nels Cline and Alan ...

The Shins’ “Port of Morrow” runs into the same problems that albums like those from the New Pornographers or of Montreal do. There is a calculation and formula to great pop songwriting, and its expert writers sometimes struggle to distinguish each song as an individual work. There’s only small windows of spontaneous possibilities, like the predictable pinch-hits of Nels Cline when a Wilco song gets lost. http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/immaculate-noise

M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel : When I Get To The Border [ purchase dvd ] I’m a huge Richard Thompson fan, but I was surprisingly not excited about this theme. Maybe it is because I haven’t found a Thompson cover that I love as much as the original. Which is not to say that there aren’t many, many good ones. I found an article in which Thompson listed his 5 favorite covers of his songs, and he chose Bonnie Raitt’s cover of “Dimming of the Day” as his favorite—and it is good. Number 3 was Dinosaur, Jr.’s cover of “I Misunderstood,” which is very different from the original, and I almost wrote about that. Instead, I picked this one, M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel’s version of “When I Get To The Border.” Deschanel was starring in a now forgotten movie called The Go-Getter, and Ward was doing the music. The director suggested that they sing a duet for the end credits, and they decided to do this cover. Ward and Deschanel apparently enjoyed themselves so much that they formed She & Him, released two albums and a Christmas album, and have toured together. I don’t think this song is commercially available, so the link above is to the DVD of the movie. Apparently, Zooey Deschanel is a very divisive figure. Google her name, and you find as many sites hating her as you do fan sites. I’m a fan. I loved her in “Elf” and “(500) Days of Summer,” and I really enjoy her sitcom, “New Girl.” I understand those who find her cutesy and affected, but I’m charmed. Her singing isn’t amazing, but it is similarly charming, and I like her voice and style more than a lot of artists that get more respect. And Ward does a pretty good job, too. So, their version of the song is enjoyable. But let’s be fair—Ward is no Richard Thompson, and Deschanel is no Linda Thompson. And the arrangement and instrumentation isn’t as interesting as the original, and the guitar playing isn’t as exciting, despite the fact that Nels Cline, the innovative guitarist from Wilco (and more experimental solo/group recordings) is credited on the track. It is, in the end, a good cover, not a great cover, of a great, generally unappreciated song. Of course, great, unappreciated songs are pretty much all that Richard Thompson writes. This one, from 1974, is the first song on the first album credited to Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight.” It is an incredible album, and the song discusses a pretty bleak life, with hope existing at the border, which, I think, but am not sure, is the edge of heaven. When the narrator gets there he finds a “dusty road that smells so sweet/ Paved with gold beneath my feet” and states, “I’ll be dancing down the street.” My interpretation fits with this quote from Thompson--"If you don't believe in anything beyond the solidity of this world, then the world is a terrible place...There's no victory in this world in the end; all you can do is get out of it." (Rolling Stone -- April 5, 1979). Personally, I don’t agree with this philosophy, but I also don’t think that you need to agree with a song to like it.

Fuck. I’ve only got twenty minutes on the phone to Lee Ranaldo and the fates have already wasted five by refusing to let my phone connect. Fuck fuck fuck. Mercifully fortune intervenes, and after a few more seconds of stress, I hear the familiar beep of an American dialling tone. Problem solved. Now I just have to resolve the issue of how I’m gonna talk to this guy like a regular human being. I mean, it’s LEE FUCKING RANALDO. Shall I talk about how Sonic Youth redefined the electric guitar with their post-no wave skronk-rock in the ...

Lee Ranaldo Between The Times And The Tides Matador Records [2012] Fire Note Says: You can take Lee Ranaldo out of Sonic Youth but you can't take the SY out of Ranaldo. Album Review: It seems like Between The Times And The Tides has been long overdue as it represents a more upfront and spotlighted album from Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo. In the past, he has released a multitude of material be it noise, acoustic items or collaborations but Between The Times is really his debut of song-oriented material with his name stamped on top. It is a ...

I'm sure most people reading this know that, along with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo is one of the co-founders of Sonic Youth. The individuals in that group were always getting involved with side projects and now, with the Gordon-Moore marriage coming to an end and Sonic Youth on an indefinite hiatus, Ranaldo has seen fit to release his first album of songs as a solo artist. It's not his first release under his own name; that was 25 years ago with the album From Here to Infinity , which famously consisted of a locked groove on ...

Here’s a brand new disc by Bill Frisell’s fiddle player. The music contained within, is well within Fris’ playing field, but there’s some adventurous circuit bent noises courtesy of Nels Cline with his bag of trick effects. Jim Black and Todd Sickafoose are on board, too, so the entire backing band is wicked good, and Scheinman wrote some nice, diversified [...]

Peter Frampton, Warren Haynes (a key supporter of the project), Nels Cline, Steve Lukather, Steve Morse, Brad Whitford, Joe Bonamassa, John Scofield, Derek Trucks, Glenn Hughes, and Myles Kennedy all contribute to this amazing project.