“Jazz Ruins Everything,” read the sticker on bassist Devin Hoff’s electric instrument, but if anything the Nels Cline Singers have gotten more jazzy, or at least less noisy, over the past couple of years. That didn’t make last night’s packed-house show (there may well have been more folks crammed into the Black Cat backstage than there were at the Singers’ previous area performance at the cavernous 1,000-seat Paramount Theater in Charlottesville) any less engrossing, as the trio, augmented for a few songs by Yuka Honda on keys, made their happily uncategorizable music come alive. Jazz ruins everything? Not Nels Cline’s music.

More photos after the jump.