Pitchfork

As you can probably tell from the picture right there, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and his brother Alex share more than a little family resemblance. In point of fact, they're identical twins, so music making's not just in Nels' DNA, but Alex's, too.

On February 10, Cryptogramophone will issue albums by each Cline; Nels' is called Coward, while Alex's is called Continuation. But these albums share a hell of a lot more than a release date.

As Cryptogramophone label head Jeff Gauthier writes on the Greenleaf music blog, "Both albums were unintentionally recorded the same week. Both album titles are one word beginning with the letter C. The covers of both recordings were painted by women artists. Both albums make references to orchids. Both contain two pieces that are 18 minutes long. Both have one piece that is over 15 years old. Drones are featured in several pieces on both CDs. The original designs of both CD discs were (again, unintentionally) practically identical, although Nels' was changed because of this. And finally, Alex's CD is about seven minutes longer than Nels'. Not a coincidence, you say? Maybe not, unless you consider that Nels is about seven minutes older than Alex. OK, maybe that's stretching it a bit."

Yeah, no need to embellish, especially when Gauthier points out that "until recently both artists had been working with absolutely no knowledge of what the other was doing." Spooky.

If you're working off your candy corn hangover this weekend, you'll wanna check out Nels and the rest of Wilco on reruns of last night's appearance on "The Colbert Report". Nels has a mess of non-Wilco dates, including gigs with Mike Watt and Stephen Perkins of Jane's Addiction in the supergroup Banyan, as well as shows with the Nels Cline Singers, while Wilco are on a break from the road.

Those dates, and the Cline brothers' tracklists, are below.



Coward:

01 Epiphyllum
02 Prayer Wheel
03 Thurston County
04 The Androgyne
05 Rod Poole's Gradual Ascent to Heaven
06 The Divine Homegirl
07 X Change(s)
08 The Nomad's Home
09 Onan Suite I. Amniotica
10 Onan Suite II. Lord & Lady
11 Onan Suite III. Dreams in the Mirror
12 Onan Suite IV. Interruption (Onan's Psychedelic Breakdown)
13 Onan Suite V. Seedcaster
14 Onan Suite VI. The Liberator
15 Cymbidium

Continuation:

01 Nourishing our Roots
02 Clearing our Streams
03 Fade to Green
04 Steadfast
05 SubMerge
06 On the Bones of the Homegoing Thunder
07 Open Hands (Receive, Release)

Nels and dem:

11-04 Long Beach, CA - DiPiazzas (Banyan)
11-05 Los Angeles, CA - The Mint (Banyan)
11-06 Venice, CA - Air Conditioned (Banyan)
11-08 Los Angeles, CA - The Wulf (Nels Cline and Devin Sarno)
11-19 San Francisco, CA - Café Du Nord (Nels Cline Singers)
11-20 Berkeley, CA - Freight & Salvage (The Rova/Nels Cline Celestial Septet)