Big Walnuts Yonder

Personnel: Nels Cline (vocals, guitar); Greg Saunier (drums).
Audio Mixer: Greg Saunier.
Recording information: Studio G, Brooklyn, NY (07/12/2014-07/14/2014).
A jam band is, at least in theory, a band that jams, and that can mean a lot of different things. If you're tired of that term being used to describe hippie-style meandering that takes a long time to go nowhere, Big Walnuts Yonder is a quartet whose members have put their own spin on the concept. Essentially a blowing session between four musicians who live and work on the experimental edge of indie rock, Big Walnuts Yonder is a collaborative project featuring bassist Mike Watt (formerly of the Minutemen and the Stooges), guitarist Nels Cline (of Wilco, the Geraldine Fibbers, and the Nels Cline Singers), guitarist and singer Nick Reinhart (of Tere Melos), and drummer Greg Saunier (of Deerhoof). While Watt supposedly brought in a number of melodic sketches for the project and Cline and Saunier also wrote tunes in advance, the melodic structures here are rarely very complicated, and the key function of the songs on this album seems to be providing a framework from which these musicians can extrapolate. These are jams in the truest sense of the word, but be either warned or assured that you can't do a noodle dance to any of these ten tracks. This is music that bristles with energy even when the songs are at midtempo, and the guitar work from Cline and Reinhart is usually glorious chaos, all skronk and odd tonal angles, while Watt and Saunier try to keep the performances on track even as their own rhythms are exploding like a bag of popcorn after a minute in the microwave. With its devotion to creative combustion, Big Walnuts Yonder is the sort of album that listeners will either love or hate, but there's little denying that these musicians generate noise with a compelling level of skill, and when they periodically ease into something close to a conventional melodic performance, their chops and imagination are similarly engaging. While a long way from perfect, Big Walnuts Yonder is overflowing with great ideas and imaginative execution -- enough so that one hopes this foursome heads into the studio again someday, or takes this very special show on the road. ~ Mark Deming