If it’s January, and you’re a guitar fan in Los Angeles, this is your month to thank the Good Lord for the abundance of riches that He’s showering down to start off the year. In the wake of Lee Ritenour and David Lindley, the ante gets upped with two of the most important pickers teaming up for an album and tour.
Free of flight leaning Nels Cline joined up with more straightahead bred Julian Lage to create one of the most important guitar duet albums in years with the simmering and spicy Room (Mack Avenue). They’ve just started touring around in support of it, and the packed Largo was treated to a display of what zeniths of symbiotic interplay can be achieved when the mixture of technique and feeling is at the right balance.
The show opened with the gents taking the pieces from their album such as “Abstract 12” and “Blues, Too” and using them as foundations for exploration like searchers for the source of the Nile. While Lage would deliver bohemian strums of rhythm, Cline used his hands to pick, pluck, strum and strain the solos that were interspersed between the alarmingly frenetic unison lines. Then, it would become Cline’s turn to supply the pulse and Lage would go from rapid fire tap dances to chopping at the chords like a master chef at Benihanas. On “Racy,” the two went from AK 47 trigger pulling to changing the tempo and dynamics like playing with a copy of a cartoon on Silly Putty, stretching and bending it but still retaining the original theme.
But it was not all display of chops and machismo, as the two showed a deft display of melody and lyricism as well. On “Rosemary” Cline picked up his 12 string electric guitar and gave a treatment to the neck that would make a chiropractor jealous, coaxing notes, themes and effects that served as a perfect partner to Lage’s chiming chords and hints of guitar boogie. Even better, the pair created a dreamy Impressionistic seascape on the reflective “Whispers From Eve” and on “Freesia/The Bond” the pair created a Vaughn Williams-esque sweep of chords with gentle rolling waves of rhythm before forming 12 gentle strings that sounded like droplets of morning rain.
The cohesive and successful meeting of minds, hearts and fingers pointed to a new level that guitar duets can reach, going light years beyond the early days of Eddie Lang and Carl Kress, the difference akin to Landing on Mars and Kitty Hawk.