Every year there’s at least one or two Nels Cline records worth getting excited about, but I’m really feeling spoiled by the guy in 2010 -- so far there’s been a Nels Cline Singers double album, the debut of Floored By Four, his new supergroup with Mike Watt, some East coast shows, and yet another double album, this one called Dirty Baby -- and that’s not even counting the Singers album with ROVA and some other collaborative projects I haven’t heard yet.
Dirty Baby is apparently some kind of multi-media collaboration with poet David Breskin's and painter Ed Ruscha, but I grabbed the album as soon as I saw it on eMusic, so I don’t know what I’m missing with the rest of the package, I may have to buy the physical thing at some point. The music component is pretty great, though, particularly the first disc of seven longer pieces -- at the moment the gorgeous "Dirty Baby: Part II" and the relaxed groove of "Dirty Baby: Part V" are my favorites. The 2nd disc of 30-something shorter pieces is a bit less enjoyable, because while there's a wealth of different sounds and moods, the constant blurting of one idea and skipping to the next doesn't really suit Nels's music that much. That said, disc 2 is worth it just for amazing song titles like “You Dirty Rotten Bitch” and “I Thought I Told You That We Wont Stop,” and Cline’s supporting cast of musicians on the album is pretty huge and impressive, and includes Jon Brion, Alex Cline, members of the Nels Cline Singers, Jeremy Drake, and Vinny Golia, among many others.