On paper, Nels Cline’s Lovers sounds impossibly idyllic. The Wilco guitarist’s latest solo foray is a double LP, his first release for Blue Note, devoted exclusively to “mood music,” inspired by Bill Evans, Gil Evans and Henry Mancini and centered around the exploration of the relationship between, as Cline puts it, “sound/song, romance/intimacy.” But Cline excels at defying expectations, as he’s done since his early days in the avant-garde Los Angeles jazz underground, and Lovers is no exception. Backed by a 23-member ensemble, Cline explores conventional mood music sounds, skipping through material like “Glad to Be Unhappy” (popularized by Frank Sinatra) and “Secret Love,” which was sung memorably by Doris Day, his playing incisive and restrained. He sounds at home evoking the bygone sounds of exotica, and he’s still too adventurous not to get weird on these well-loved songs. He offers up a quixotic take on Gábor Szabó’s “Lady Gabor,” a bit of anguish on Annette Peacock’s “So Hard It Hurts/Touching” and even a cover of Sonic Youth’s “Snare, Girl”—a hat tip to Cline’s noisy roots—but he never veers away from the subtlety that permeates this set of songs. As wonderful as the covers here are, Cline’s own compositions put forth the most thrilling moments, like the slowcore-shaded album closer, “The Bond,” which points to the vastness of the album’s theme—at once tender, spooky, lovely, puzzling and ultimately overpowering.