Nels Cline is one of those iconoclastic string-pickers, much like Robert Fripp, Manuel Gottsching, Pat Metheny, or Keith Rowe, for whom the guitar is anything but a simplistic instrument. Oh, he goes that route, the acoustic route, too, as well evidenced here on Coward (as misleading and ill-advised a title as I have come across in recent memory; Cline's probably just reveling in the irony), but this is a man whose versatility, not to mention his virtuosity, needs the accolades he's long-deserved. Bottom line, this isn't just a "guitar" album, nor is it a flashy, ego-suffused, everything-goes display of nimble-fingered ingenuity. Examining the man's laundry list of tools on the back cover provides tantalizing clues: in addition to the usual acoustic and electric guitars, Cline is further credited with effects, sruti boxes, autoharp/zither things, megamouth, kaossilator, and quintronics drum buddy. What this translates to is an overdubbed wet dream of objects strummed, stripped, strangulated, and strafed, the likes of which hasn't been heard in these parts since perhaps Phil Manzanera's Impossible Guitars warpage.

Not that there's been a dearth of other similarly cast outings, but Cline's really his own elemental force this time around. He's played with more hipsters, avant-gardists, and pioneers than one can expect within one's lifetime, effortlessly darting between the idioms of rock, jazz, folk, neo-classical, and free improv with boundless ease. Virtuosity is akin to a four-letter word in the jazz schema, yet it's gents like Cline who tailor-make such phraseology to fit comfortably around them like a thousand dollar silk suit. One quick glimpse into the humming electro soundscape of the opening "Epiphyllum" instantly signals the listener isn't anywhere near Kansas, Toto, Cline putting his best compositional foot forward and taking nary a misstep throughout. Guitar-centric (meaning sans effects, for the most part) pieces such as "Prayer Wheel" and the wooly electric jazz-blues of "Thurston County" (a tribute to Sonic Youth's erstwhile mainman?) benefit from Cline's alacrity and sheer grace, his guitars a synergy of deepening chord progressions that spiral upward in intensity. Pretty bracing stuff.

But the real meat and potatoes here are the epic pieces that Cline weaves worlds within. The 18-minute "Rod Poole's Gradual Ascent to Heaven" starts out with almost Fahey-esque lament, the lithe silences he leaves between notes every bit as potent as what he splays out; gradually, these embryonic duets blossom into gorgeous shafts of light. The 17-minute "Onan" suite is every bit as indulgent as its title suggests, but it's doubtful few would quibble since the artist is so damn adept at what he does. Here Cline introduces again a portentous squall of grumbling sounds on the verge of explosion. Restraint is his calling card, however, for instead of going the cacophonic route, Cline feints left and instead treats us to some decidedly "proggy" affectations, squealing like arcing seagulls one moment, trudging a barren landscape the next. Beguiling moments like these, particularly when interrupted by shimmering phantasia like "Dreams in the Mirror", do little to dispel the notion that Cline's grasp of idioms he alternately subsumes and conjugates has few, if any, rivals.