A Long Overdue New Album From Tom Csatari’s Drifting, Haunting, Maddening, Defiantly Individualistic Uncivilized Big Band

Back in 2016, this blog characterized guitarist Tom Csatari’s Uncivilized as a “tectonically shifting ten-piece ‘drone-jazz orchestra.’“ They earned a glowing New York Times review for a show at a short-lived Bushwick strip club. That gig also earned them a listing here on what was then a monthly concert calendar. Nobody from this blog ended up going.

The prolific bandleader’s compositions fall into a netherworld of film noir themes, bittersweet Bill Frisell pastoral jazz, the Grateful Dead at their dark early 80s peak and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. During the band’s long, mostly-monthly Barbes residency, they played several cover nights. Chico Hamilton night was shockingly trad and tight. It would have been fun to see what they did with John Fahey. The best of them all was Twin Peaks night in October 2017, where they played Angelo Badalamenti’s David Lynch film scores. The group’s transcendently haphazard take on that iconic noir repertoire was captured on the live album Uncivilized Plays Peaks.

They also released another, considerably shorter record as a salute to five separate music venues which were shuttered during the pandemic of gentrification that devastated this city right up until the lockdown. Their latest live album, Garden, is streaming at Bandcamp.

The title seems to stem (sorry, awful pun) from the fact that the tracklist matches the setlist they played at another killer show, outdoors at Pioneer Works in late summer 2018 with guest Jaimie Branch being her usual extrovert self on trumpet. There’s some of that show here along with material captured at various venues, including the Barbes residency.

Csatari’s arrangements span the sonic spectrum in a vast Gil Evans vein, Tristan Cooley’s upwardsly fluttering flute often engaged on the low end by Nick Jozwiak’s slinky bass and Casey Berman’s solid bass clarinet. A series of fleeting modal interludes separate the individual themes here, many of which are barely a minute long: fades and splices are usually subtle but inevitably obvious. Colorful, imperturbable drummer Rachel Housle is the Casey Jones who manages to keep this ramshackle train on the rails – barely.

Levon Henry’s alto sax bubbles and sails alongside Luther Wong’s trumpet, Dominick Mekky’s transistor organ ranging from spacy ambience to ripples and washes. Csatari tends to fling low-key but persistently uneasy chordlets and jangly riffs into the ether, Julian Cubillos typically carrying the harder-edged guitar lines, although the two sometimes switch roles.

Henry provides shivery ambience in a brief portion of Pink Room, from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. They segue into a starry, pulsing take of Csatari’s Melted Candy and soon edge their way to a slowly coalescing, genuinely joyous crescendo in the Twin Peaks title theme. You might think that joy would be completely out of place in that context but it isn’t.

Csatari’s Rowlings – in several parts – makes an optimistic, soul-infused segue. Likewise, the take of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock rises from a brief, broodingly sway to a triumphant country-soul anthem. The coda is Evil, deviously quoting at length from Paul McCartney: if we ever get out of here!

If this is the last album the band ever release – and it could be, since the lockdowners are hell-bent on destroying music and the arts – they went out with a bang. On the other hand, if we destroy the lockdowners, music like this will flourish. It’s a no-brainer: Microsoft, or Tom Csatari’s Unciviiized. At this point in history, we can’t have both.

Be aware that you need to make a playlist out of this to enjoy it as a full-length album. Otherwise, constantly having to reach for the play button in between these often very short tracks is like driving a loaded tractor-trailer along a steep mountain road, distracted by the need to double-clutch and downshift.

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Tom Csatari’s Uncivilized Make a Long-Awaited Comeback in Red Hook This Thursday

Of all the great bands who’ve had monthly residencies at Barbes over the years, one of the most consistently entertaining and even paradigm-shifting ones was by Tom Csatari’s Uncivilized. Throughout 2016 and into the fall of last year, the guitarist and his nine-piece group careened through a more-or-less monthly series of shows there. Crowds were good, and word was out about Csatari’s enigmatically orchestrated, scruffy, individualistic mashup of jangly Americana and improvisational jazz.

Then disaster struck.

Long story short: Csatari survived a brush with death, and has reconvened the band for a show this Thurs, Aug 23, starting at around 6:30 PM at Pioneer Works. The band’s Barbes gigs were always on the epic side, so if you can’t make it to Red Hook by the time the doors open, don’t stress. The show is free; you probably can just walk in although the venue wants you to rsvp. It’s the big comeback jazz show of 2018, and this blog will be in the house.

Throughout the residency, Csatari and the crew played mostly originals, although they did a surprisingly tight and trad Chico Hamilton night and explored other composers as well. The best of the cover nights, by a country mile, was Twin Peaks night in October of last year. It earned a mention as one of the year’s best concerts here, and serendipitously, the entire show was recorded and is streaming at Csatari’s music page.

For that show, Csatari had his tremolo on, but not with as wide an angle as on Angelo Badalamenti’s iconic soundtrack. The group began by skirting the Twin Peaks title theme, hitting on the offbeat instead of nailing it right from the start and ending up with as much if not more suspense as the original as the high reeds – flutist Tristan Cooley and alto saxophonist Levon Henry – misted and veered in and out of focus. Without flinching, they gracefully fluttered through the end, as closely as a nine-piece jazz ensemble can approximate a four-piece rock band. Without a hint as to what they’d play next, they vamped slowly and built to a mighty crescendo fueled by a couple of emphatic Csatari clangs, then the instruments fell away….into a haphazard jam on one of the more unctuous Christmas carols out there. Jethro Tull once used it as comic “relief,” if that means anything to you. Csatari reprised Badalamenti’s haunting, minimialist riffs at the end with a spare, lingering presence.

Listening back to this show a year later is a trip, to say the least. Rashomon memories fall away, while the more indelible ones spring back to life. Drummer Rachel Housle’s stunning dynamics, from hushed, Lynchian suspense to a four-on-the-floor rock swing are a big part of the picture – although happily the mic was positioned so the drums don’t drown anybody out. Likewise, bassist Nick Jozwiak’s slinky pulse and occasional thunderous chord are toward the back in the mix.

The band also played a lot of originals that night, many of the intros slowly coalescing only to slowly unwind later. Rowlings, with its nebulous, Frisellian intro and tempo changes; the haphazardly twisted little waltz Yellow Rose; Just Friends, a starrily brooding duet between Csatari and fellow six-stringer Julian Cubilllos; and the hypnotic Lullaby Stomp (hardly a stomp, actually) are early highlights.

With torchy, soul-infused grit, singer Ivy Meissner leads the band through a couple of her songs, Races Are Run and Shelby as well as the Julee Cruise valium-noir hits Questions in a World of Blue and The Nightingale. Organist Dominic Mekky is most present in the best of the originals, the catchy, nebulously pulsing Pale Rider.

The rest of the Twin Peaks material is also choice. The group reinvent the stalking Pink Room theme as a sway, and then practically a soul strut. Laura Palmer’s theme is all the more menacing for its sparseness, mostly just Csatari and Cubillos the first time around. And bass clarinetist Casey Berman adds welcome gravitas to the sardonic Audrey Horne stripper theme.

Csatari can be hilarious when he wants, with a cynicism that’s pure punk rock. Voices diverge and fall off the page. The momentary detours into into punk, new wave and free squall can be priceless. But he can also be as unselfconsciously dark as you would expect from a guy who would take the trouble to come up with his own Twin Peaks charts. The band should be especially psyched to tackle whatever he throws at them in Red Hook.

Epic Lynchian Jazz at Barbes Last Night

Covering music as iconic as the Twin Peaks soundtrack is playing with fire. Last night at Barbes, it was as if guitarist Tom Csatari said, “Fire walk with me!” and his nine-piece band Uncivilized could’t wait to follow him into the flames. It was less an inferno than the slowly gathering menace of a prairie burn – Angelo Badalementi’s David Lynch film scores are all about suspense and distant dread. And it was an awful lot of fun to find out just where this unpredictable crew would take those themes.

They opened with the Twin Peaks title theme. From the first few lingering notes of Csatari’s guitar, it was obvious that they weren’t going to play it completely straight-up, considering that he was already staking out territory around the famous, ominous, two-note opening riff. The genius of Badalaenti’s score is that he uses very simple ideas for his variations for all the femme fatales, wolves in sheeps’ clothing and resolute boy scout detectives. If only for a second, any of them could be pure evil. In that sense, the music perfectly matches Lynch’s esthetic.

Yet as much further out as Csatari and the band took this material, they also stuck pretty closely to the melody and the changes. This was hardly generic postbop jazz with halfhearted alllusions to the tunes and solos around the horn.

And Uncivilized are the least generic jazz group in New York. One of Csatari’s favorite devices is to swing and sway his way up to a big crescendo where the four-horn frontline can shiver and flurry, more or less – sometimes a lot less – in unison. They did that here a lot, as well as messing up the rhythm a little with a couple of what sounded like momentary free interludes over drummer Rachel Housle’s floating swing.

There are some great players in this band, but she was the biggest hit with the crowd, as dynamic as she was subtle – and she’s very subtle. Starting out with a suspenseful, muted thud with her mallets, she muted her snare with a scarf, went to sticks and then brushes, using the trebliest parts of the kit for rat-a-tat riffs and hits in all the least expected places. Can anybody say “DownBeat Critics’ Poll Rising Star, 2017?”

Bassist Nick Jozwiak bobbed and bounced like a human slinky behind his upright, playing terse, rubbery rock riffs bolstered by the occasional looming chord. Guitarist Julian Cubillos shadowed Csatari with a subtlety to rival Housle, particularly when the bandleader was playing with a slide for a hint of extra deep-woods menace. Keyboardist Dominic Mekky sent starry electric piano wafting through the mist in lieu of Badalamenti’s big-sky string synth orchestration, while the horns – flutist Tristan Cooley, alto saxophonist Levon Henry, tenor saxophonist Kyle Wilson and bass clarinetist Casey Berman – built a fluttery, gauzy sheen.

They reached toward the macabre stripper tune inside The Bookhouse Boys, played a tantalizing, single haphazardly uneasy verse of Laura  Palmer’s theme and then found unexpected grit – and a Pink Panther – in Audrey Horne’s theme.

Singer Ivy Meissner joined the band to deliver Julee Cruise’s Nightingale as well as Questions in a World of Blue, opting for soul-infused plaintiveness rather than trying to be the girl at the very bottom of the well. Meissner also sang Shelby, a noir-tinged soul ballad from her excellent debut album from last year. In between, she suddenly disappeared: it turned out that she’d taken a seat on the floor amidst the band.

Additionally, Csatari led the group through a handful of his own enigmatically careening pastoral jazz numbers, including a couple of somewhat restrained “stomps.” Most of what this band plays sounds as if it’s completely improvised, but it’s likely that most of it is actually composed, testament to how fresh Csatari’s charts are. No voicing is ever in constant, traditional harmony with the rest of the group, which enhances the suspense as much as it it opens up the floor for more interesting conversations than most bands dream of starting.

Csatari’s next gig is with Meissner on Nov 13 at 7 PM at Footlight Bar in Ridgewood. And fans of Twin Peaks and deep noir should also check out Big Lazy, who play their monthly Friday night show at Barbes on Nov 3 at 10 PM.

Subtle Wit, Purposeful Mess, Enigmatic Tunefulness, Epic Stagger and a Barbes Show by Guitarist Tom Csatari’s Uncivilized

The cover photo of Tom Csatari‘s new vinyl album Melted Candy shows a golden retriever sitting on the curb, looking wistfully to the side. Straight ahead, across the street, urban folk art. Somebody’s taken the time to paint “ONE DAY we will PART” on what appears to be a jerry-rigged fence surrounding a construction site. Is this all-too-familiar tableau a commentary on the seemingly endless destruction of (relatively) affordable living spaces in this city? Or is it more grimly universal? From the music, played by the guitarist’s individualistic, genre-warping large ensemble, Uncivilized, it’s more complicated than that: all four tracks are instrumentals. You might get a better idea when the group brings their uneasy, distinctively tuneful, often purposefully messy yet psychedelically intricate sound – call it heavy pastoral jazz, maybe?- to Barbes on Dec 29 at 10 PM. Their most recent show there was back in August, the guitar-and-reed-fueled group slayed and the room was packed, so you might want to get there a little early.

The purpose of the ep – streaming at Tiny Montgomery Records – was to capture both large and small configurations of the group. The sarcastically opening miniature, Stupid Gurus takes its inspiration from an exasperated Paul Mann rant about the failure of underground art and any attempt to raise awareness about it. Mann’s primary argument concerns the incompatibility of art and commerce, echoed in the cloying, mealymouthed main melody as the instruments flutter and pull away.

Escarpments coalesces slowly out of jangly, rainy-day folk-tinged guitar as drummer Rachel Housle builds enigmatic ambience with her cymbals and hardware; from there, reeds and rhythm hover and huddle against an insistent post-Velvets vamp. Csatari is a master of implied melody, teasing you to think he’s playing more notes than he actually is, and this is a killer example, his slide guitar and Levon Henry’s bass clarinet leading a steady slide down into the murk. Is this a reference to edifices nobody wants?.

ScoJaVel® is supposed to be a mashup of John Scofield, Skip James and Maurice Ravel. It has more of a lingering 80s punk jazz feel, or like Mary Halvorson in offhandedly snide mode, the reeds flickering against Csatari’s reverbtoned swipes as drummer Coleman Bartels highfives him. Nick Jozwiak’s brisk, staccato cello pairs against Tristan Cooley’s brooding flute as the band strolls purposefully behind them on the final cut, BrandCore™, a tune they could have stretched out for five times as long as they did if they’d really wanted to. But then it wouldn’t have fit onto 7” vinyl. Just as they do onstage, these players build the sonic equivalent of a stone wall that looks like it could collapse any minute despite all outward appearances but never does, because everything is too tight. But demolition is always just as much of a possibility, which is as much fun live as you could possibly imagine. Other players on these songs include Michael Sachs on sax and clarinet, Casey Berman on sax and bass clarinet, Ben Katz on bass clarinet, Nick Jost on bass, Julian Cubillos and Sean Schuster-Craig on guitars and Dominic Mekky on organ, If you’re in town over the holidays and the F train is running, Barbes would be an awfully fun place to be on the 29th.