TOM CIURCZAK, Yorick

In my super-gushy, wow, I can’t believe there’s actually an emerging (but wonderfully seasoned) indie rocker worth praising writeups of Tom Ciurczak’s auspiciously and cleverly/defiantly titled second and third albums I Ain’t Ever Growing Up, Volumes I and II, I covered all the important background stuff about setting aside his dreams and becoming a rock star innovator in the lighting business.

I mentioned the success of his earlier critically debut album Call Me Ishmael, which earned airplay on over 250 stations throughout the U.S. and Europe. Of Volume I, I opined that it was “a slate of eight exciting and diverse originals that are all at once contemporary and of the moment yet steeped in his desire to give listeners the vibe of the classic rock he grew up with.” And of Volume II: “Even at only eight songs and 31 minutes each (how perfectly symmetrical is that?) he blissfully gives our minds, hearts and souls a lot of passion, energy and narrative magic to take to heart.  

No matter how enthralled I was, in the back of my mind doubts crept in – would this long in the making musical miracle just get all this out of his pent-up musical energy out of system and do a quick fade? Or would he use those powerhouse collections as springboards for an enduring new career? Turns out, you can’t underestimate the passion and endless creativity of a kid raised on The Who, Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Warren Zevon, et al, who refuses to give up, give in and grow the F up!

I’m super-jazzed to note that his latest album Yorick (as glorious a WTF title as I’ve ever heard!) is an epic romp of eclectic electric guitar driven excitement and fascinating lyrical intrigue that is more than a worthy follow-up to all the fiery coolness of Tom’s earlier opuses. And since I can’t seem to stop inserting myself into my so called objective journalistic analyses of his continuously compelling work, I’m delighted to say that with the album title and vocal harmony filled mid-tempo pop/rock title track, he helped me finally make use of my long ago English Lit degree from UCLA. I vaguely remember Hamlet’s oft quoted line, “a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy,” but had apparently overlooked Yorick, the unseen late court jester from Shakespeare’s classic whose skull is exhumed by the First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1.

It was interesting to reconnect with Hamlet’s nostalgic look at this man who had “borne me on his back a thousand times”/and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!” but even more fascination with Tom’s artful stab at much needed character development, that includes jugglers, jokers, puppet shows, duels, fools and fire breathers and a daring rescue of a Rapunzel like maiden. With this poetic song, Tom has created the Shakesperean era equivalent of an Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull medieval dreamscape.

“I had this crazy idea to make up a backstory behind Yorick’s skull from Hamlet,” the singer says. “I knew he was a court jester from Hamlet’s youth, but no one knew how he died. So I made up a mashed-up fairytale, utilizing Brothers Grimm characters, plus a proverbial wicked witch. To me, the song has both serious and funny lyrical moments. Musically, I incorporated both folk and 70’s prog rock elements, which came out better than I hoped for. I chose Yorick for the album title because it was a standout track and a brain tease – plus a throwback to Call Me Ishmael, my other album with a literary reference title many didn’t know offhand. My friend Camille Woods created a beautiful cover painting from AI images I found with the jester’s skull and castles in the background.”

Paul McCartney scored a #1 hit back in ’76 with a tune asserting his right to sing “Silly Love Songs.” Tom, like John Lennon, is something of the anti-Paul, including only a single romantic-minded tune, a mid-tempo, trumpet laced delight about a bittersweet letdown, a fall from the “Top of the Rainbow” amidst a gathering of tracks of different vibes and tempos and wildly adventurous narratives about a range offbeat topics – pretty much anything under the sun that strikes Tom’s vivid imagination. While everyone will love hearing the smoother side of his singing voice, it’s actually more fun listening to the loud, edgy Springsteenesque grit he brings to the blistering rockers.

The opening rockers “The Watcher” and “Wild One” show us the range of Tom’s ever more fascinating storytelling, showcasing his talent for boldly tackling out-there themes and drawing on his own life to tell darker, heavy duty emotional tales. Inspired by the Nasca Lines in Peru and the theories of how they could serve as traffic signs/landing strips for aliens, the rollicking, action packed (both musically and lyrically) “The Watcher” finds Tom telling a tale of a stranded alien who was dropped off to create those signs and then abandoned. In the past he has seen planets born and die. Now he plays witness to world history via Tom’s clever references to Stonehenge, Tiananmen Square, Area 51, the Roman Empire, pyramids and the space age. Tom’s sense of social consciousness, an element of his songwriting from the beginning, extends here to an insightful, resigned line like “Better fasted your seat belts/It’s going to be a bumpy ride when the ice caps melt.” At least the alien can escape. Those of us who are still alive won’t be so lucky.   

With it’s references to stolen cars, racing, running from cops and cultural touchstones like Rebel Without a Cause and Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” the equally feisty and rumbling “Wild One” is as much an homage to Steppenwolf as it is a somber reflection on lost soul friends from Tom’s younger days that, as he says, “lived their lives at full speed but never survived their youth.” Beyond the tough, hard-hitting narrative, discerning listeners should hone in on the twin guitar harmony, a technique he picked up playing Allman Brothers songs back in high school.  

Taking his passion for incendiary Rage Against the Machine-styled anthems into the sociopolitical realm, the incisive “You’re Next” finds him talk singing at times, singing soaring “oh oh oh” choruses at others to get important points across about the perils of human life in a world where democracy is failing, there are no winners only survivors and “governments are bigger liars.” The title is a crafty riff on Pete Townshend’s “Who’s Next” but it comes in the context of dire warnings for humanity – because no one will be around to save us when it’s our turn to…well, let’s not think about it, let’s just enjoy it as a high-octane anthem while we can, okay? Tom always works with a killer band, and this one has an unforgettable slap bass solo by Brandon Washington that sounds like an erratic heartbeat trying to make sense of the madness.

Following those key flashpoints (any of which honestly make perfect entry points into the thematically expansive Yorick aesthetic), Tom bitingly tackles the tragedy of homelessness on the funky rocker “Where Do I Belong,” but with tiny shards of optimism even as tough and intractable as the problem and situation often is: “Sleeping on the streets/I know it’s gonna be all right. . .If things go my way, I’ll be back on top again.” If the alien in “The Watcher” listened to this one, he might have stuck around longer!

The aforementioned “Top of the Rainbow” is a the mainstream sad love song oasis in the midst of a group of tracks further showcasing his appealing stylistic mood swings. There’s the lively barnburner “Chameleon,” Tom’s sly, inventive equivalent of “Secret Agent Man,” Then he taps into traditional country vibes on the easy loping, ballad “A.L.T.O.W.D.” an acronym for Another Long Typical Ordinary Working Day, which sounds a bit mundane but is actually a grand showcase for his sense of dry humor, about a guy who’s on a mission the CIA in Afghanistan trying to convince one of the farmers to switch his heroin business from Russia to the U.S. Interestingly, Tom wrote this country-flavored gem entirely on the piano using only his left hand after having carpal and cubital tunnel surgeries on his right arm. But you may be too enraptured by Matt Lomeo’s soulful harmonica to think much about Tom’s travails.

Tom wraps Yorick in the fascinating double bow of the oddly titled, semi-apocalyptic mid-tempo rocker “Malleus Maleficarum” (whose title means “Hammer of Witches”) and a playful closer about personal escapism (“Am I MIA”) which balances fear with the idea that even if the world seems like gloom and doom, we can still cautiously pursue our dreams (um, yeah, like Tom is doing!). The ominous, incendiary “MM” goes full Tull using a 15th Century term as a metaphor for the current tragedies unfolding in Ukraine and Gaza, with so many innocents being killed in wars so many seem to justify as right. Written with a jangly “Ventura Highway”-stye flow, “Am I MIA” is the most lighthearted tune on the album, weaving a humor-filled tale of a bored man who takes a job as a paid mercenary – and all built around Tom’s infectious tongue twister “Am I MIA or Am I in Miami.”

Reflecting on the process of creating Yorick, which was recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound and Cosmic Voyager in L.A., Tom says, “To me, this is a big step forward, as me and my production/engineering team of Stephen Haaker and Brett Grossman were able to easily communicate and bounce many musical ideas back and forth - to lift up the songs, so as to keep each one fresh, interesting and moving for the listener. In many ways, I feel like I’ve just taken an accelerated course in songwriting for recording over the last five years. With each new album, we try and learn something new, leading each project to sound better and more unified.”