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Some forms are relatively easy to play at a level that is, if not masterful, then at least listenable. The basics of blues-rock are simple enough that any garage band worth its salt can work through the paces of a few standards, master a few licks that everyone knows, and the riff-based style is both fun to play, and easy to get a friendly audience to appreciate if nobody is too much of a snob. Some styles, though, are extraordinarily difficult, not merely at a technical level, but at a conceptual level. As in, get everything right, or it all falls apart. You are shooting the moon, so to speak. Avant-garde jazz is the classic example. Unless everything comes together perfectly, it’s just random noise, and it is very hard to get everything to come together.Enter Curlew, and the revised release of North America, supplemented with some live material featuring oddball guitarist, Nicky Skopelitis. Curlew was one of the many bands floating around the New York avant-garde scene in the 1980s, and as such, a jazz fan, or music fan in general who is skeptical of the pretense of avant-garde could simply glide over any mention of them as though they never existed. Yet they were different. Truth be told, without the Skopelitis connection, I never would have noticed the band, nor this album.This release of North America is divided between the original release, without Skopelitis, and live performances with the guitarist. Yet even though I came here for Nicky, I find myself appreciating the band in its entirety. They manage that difficult task of interesting, and meaningful avant-garde jazz. With or without Nicky. With Nicky, it is better, yet Nicky wouldn’t have been there had the band not had something going for them.Nicky Skopelitis floated around the edges of many projects, including those associated with Bill Laswell, and even worked with Ginger Baker. Nicky is good, and very interesting. He does not noodle. That’s the key, and that’s where avant-garde goes wrong. Neither Nicky, nor the rest of the group simply noodles.The structures are odd, to be sure, yet strangely organic. Even when dissonant, the compositions feel fluid, and moving in natural ways. At its best, the style of jazz is a style that says, we will not be bound. Allow for surprises and sudden left turns. Moments of dissonance, bursts of energy, and so forth. Just don’t cross that line of making it sound like randomness. The roll of the dice. It is a balancing act.Lean a bit in one direction, and the spontaneity goes away. Bor-ring! The other, and birthday-suited emperor territory. Random noise parading as music. No, thanks. Riding that line is difficult. In the midst of New York’s 1980’s scene, there were so many temptations, but somehow Curlew found a way to balance all of these tensions and produce music that was propulsive, organic, surprising, tense, and yet never quite crossed that line into noise. They held the groove, even if sometimes barely. Part of it was the instrumentation, to be sure. Sax and guitars, supplemented by violin (or cello), accordion… these are not the normal instruments of avant-noise-jazz, although bowing too close to the bridge can create a tone that those raised on classical technique find repulsive. And hence that some avant-noise people will find fascinating. Not so much of that here. Organic tones, with surprising and challenging structures, and not really like much of what was going on in the 80s New York scene. So even without Nicky, the original North America album stands out as a breath of fresh air for those who want to hear what the genre could have been, or at least was in some deep corners when the excesses weren’t too excessive.Fascinating.