New Nostalgia @Andy’s, Or, What It Might Look Like If The Jazz Students Got Mortgages But Were Still Geeks

By Dominic Guanzon

Saturday 04/15/23

Chicago’s New Nostalgia seem like the natural continuation of the geeky, chill musicians you might’ve encountered in college. The kind you’d imagine slinging around snacks while on the sheet music-ridden floor, or noodling on their horns and guitars in Depeche Mode tees. You may have never actually talked to them, either by chance or because they’d be speaking in the tongues of music theory. And yet, you could feel they had a vibe.

Regardless, if you caught their concert towards the end of the semester, you would absolutely notice they had no chill on the bandstand. They’d be a horn-heavy group doing insane arrangements of Streetlight Manifesto, or bust out a since-faded 80s new wave hit that would make an old school Chicago player tilt their head.

I’ve never met the players of New Nostalgia, but I did know the archetype. If I had to bet, most met through the jazz program, a few were rock kids, and there’s one that still plays for their church. That’s a complete guess based on aesthetics alone, but the songs they blasted from the Andy’s stage felt straight out of a college get-together. 

There was plenty of nostalgia that night, but I didn’t quite expect it to be launched-in-a-DeLorean levels of it. The group capitalized on their name with a swingin’ interpretation of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. It was a big band rendition with an intro that could easily serve as their theme song, or the theme to a late night talk show. It also had the power of a big band, but the manpower of a nonet – a rarer configuration with a unique output.

The arrangement made what was already an upbeat 80s classic an even more energetic celebration that set the tone for the night. It was breezy, but not light. Soaring, but not without weight. The song’s iconic V/I¹ to IV/I vamp² reinforces it all, and they milk it because it’s just too good. A bold but effective choice to drop everything and go to a solo by bassist Tim Sesser did not go unnoticed by the crowd. 

Going into an inspiring version of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”, I’m brought back to 2015 at the Green Mill when guitarist Bobby Broom. There, he played two jazz sets covering 60s and 70s rock and pop. Hits from “Guitar Man” and “Summer Breeze” to “I Can’t Help It” and “Layla”. 

Those were Broom’s decades, and it seems like for New Nostalgia, theirs may very well be the 80s and beyond.

As for “Bizarre Love Triangle” itself, the band reveled in every hit and horn swell.

New Order’s song may have a slight detachment that’s in line with the synth-pop era, but New Nostalgia injects a sound that I can only describe as “refreshing”. Not in the sense that it was new, but more like it was a drink of water I desperately needed. It’s a sound that refreshes as if the hip, local non-denominational church group is holding their version of a revival meeting, but it’s cool because they’re so non-denominational you can barely tell they’re a church group and the revival just becomes a jam. And the music is Tears for Fears.

Pianist Jake Shapiro reinforces the notion with open, earthy, and pentatonic chording put in full display by the arrangement.

Composer, arranger, alto player, and bandleader Neil Carson described the group to the Andy’s audience as a “jazz-pop-rock” group that “can’t decide” which one they want to be. As he put it, they just “wanna rock out” while “embracing Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong as well as The Police and Metallica.”

Carson is a delight to watch, personifying the band’s energy almost all by himself. It’s totally my head canon now, but I still want to believe his nonet are all college jazz homies brought forward a decade. If they were, you’d have eight of the stronger, more silent musicians digging deep with stank faces, and one Neil twisting and hopping about everywhere tearing it up on the alto. I also knew both types in college, and they were always the best shows. New Nostalgia was that at Andy’s, and my feelings still track.

Stepping back into 2023 brought the group’s first original of the evening: another rejuvenating piece called “Tryin’” from their 2021 EP “Frankenstein Sessions”. Carson said the tune originated from the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, whenever he was asked “how are you?” He would respond: “tryin’ to be a person, how you doing?”

After that, we flash back once more to an 80s new wave cover with Yazoo’s “Only You”. It was another upending of the colder synth-pop context from which it came from, featuring quarter-note marches that embrace the feel-good nature of the band, and injecting blues licks and wails into their solos. This was followed by another original entitled “Solve It”, also using those addictive quarter-note marches.

There have been other attempts to take on jazz covers of 80s music, but most of them fall in the realm of party favor rather than being an artist’s tribute to great music. There’s a series of albums called “Jazz and ‘60s/’70s/’80s/’90s” on the PMB Music label (among others, but they were the main one), and it’s a commercial compilation of jazz covers that, as a final package, really emphasize the novelty of the whole thing.

Perhaps the best of these is “Skin Trade” by Anakelley, with the worst easily being “Smoke on the Water”. In both cases, they’re the same, sultry takes that a general audience would immediately predict when they hear “jazz cover”. They’re really hit or miss. I won’t knock it if it bridges you over to the deeper stuff, but I can’t shake the gimmick aspect. I dare not try the album of Guns ‘n’ Roses bossa nova covers (no, I’m not linking it).

By contrast, what Carson and New Nostalgia have done is infuse the traditions of the jazz lineage that makes the Chicago scene. They know swing isn’t playing the hi-hat in a certain rhythm, but rather a feel, born from the blues, that plays with our perception of time. They know there’s a time and a place to throw down a blues lick. They know when to keep an iconic part of the song, when to modify it, and when to drop it entirely.

On that last one, their take on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” keeps the aforementioned V/I to IV/I vamp, though the rhythm is modified. However, it ditches the keyboard’s opening triplet pattern that becomes a bed prior to the vamp. Is it an iconic part of the song? Yes, but it doesn’t need it, and it supports the swingin’, primetime talk show-big band feel. Meanwhile, the beautiful descending line that plays over where the title is sung is untouched because, of course.

Like any native speaker watching a TV show butchering their mother tongue, you can usually tell when someone knows it, or at least learned it really damn well. Their 2019 debut album showcases this in abundance.

Bobby Broom’s “Soul Fingers” album, the product of the Green Mill session I mentioned earlier, is a great companion to this line of thinking. A groovin’ rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” by Chicago’s Alyssa Allgood is another. With all of these examples, the “act” is toned down, the knowledge is foundational, and the heart shines through as a result.

The Andy’s crowd was almost too well-behaved for the back-and-forth between originals and hype 80s covers, as if it was “Back to the Future” Night at the club (which, no, doesn’t exist). I almost wished the club’s staff would clear the floor of tables so we could all jump around like a good and proper youth group. I don’t think they would have gone for it, but I swear the staff was having the most visible fun. Solos and trades from the other members of the rhythm section, each one forcing the front line to drop down to the ground, also marked high points.

Not since Sammy Miller and the Congregation in 2015 or Huntertones in 2016, each playing in Andy’s more upscale venue, have I had the sort of raw fun New Nostalgia brought. 

The Huntertones’ album “Play” in particular was my first thought, back when they were the Dan White Sextet. It was the fresher, more high-flying, almost-spiritual aspect to their sound that caught me. The kind that’s very much a clean approach even when the soloists decide to play more out. Such a consistent tone also harkens back to Quentin Coaxum’s Current – if you stacked three more horns on it and gave everyone two shots of espresso. That might be a stretch, but Stu Mindeman’s piano on that record has had a great effect on me, and I’ve been chasing it ever since.

New Nostalgia tapped into all of that through their collective technique and arrangement. All of that, while playing Tears for Fears.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. On the lucky days you can experience it truly and in its totality, it can take you near anywhere.

New Nostalgia got me to write nostalgic throughout the article after eight whole years of effectively tuning out of this scene so I could focus on “real life”. I had never heard of them before, but I heard them that night. Their awesome rock ‘n’ roll energy not only on the bandstand but in the arrangements are what make this music so fun, and what make this band so fun to see live.

That night of music also flashed a couple dozen memories of watching the jazz kids sharing those arrangements of Streetlight Manifesto and Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” during my college days. That brought me back, and brought me a lot of joy.

New Nostalgia is:

Neil Carson (as)

Connor Bernhard (t)

Alex Beltran (ts)

Andy Schlinder (bs)

Walter Sanchez (tr)

Brandon Hunt (g)

Jake Shapiro (p)

Timothy Seisser (b)

Zack Marks (d)

Interview with Neil Carson here.

More info on New Nostalgia and Neil Carson here.

You can find New Nostalgia on Bandcamp.

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1. V/I: five chord with the one note in the bass. In the key of C, this would be a G chord with a C in the bass.
2. Vamp: a set of bars that are repeated indefinitely until told otherwise.

All photos below by Dominic Guanzon.