A search for the New Melodic is not a quest for "good tunes". A good tune can be pretty dissonant, plangent, even atonal. A good tune can be out of tune! A "good tune" might be a pop song you never want to hear again after loving it for a while. The New Melodic is something different. It might be closer to the idea of an anthem, or better still a moment based around a point of clarity. It's also cadences. There's also a melancholia and sometimes the New Melodic resembles what's called the Nordic tone but it's not a Nordic music. There's plenty of the New Melodic around. Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpHBjKTmXws
So, instrumental jazz with tunes and anthemic appeal besides Tingvall trio, a Swedish/German/Cuban band based in Hamburg, bands such as Girls in Airports, GoGo Penguin, Oddarrang, bassist Matt Ridley's Thymos band, the New Melodic is catnip for bassists, and across the Atlantic trumpeter Christian Scott (particularly his 2007 album Anthem). Phronesis are New Melodic godfathers in the UK.
Crucially they can't at all be called "post-bop" as somehow even if yes you can hear bebop changes here and there the term is meaningless. Melody overtakes extensive use of chord changes based on historic jazz patterns dating to the 1940s. But it doesn't overtake rhythm.
Chord changes are in thrall to the melody and rhythm but the melody itself is the servant of the improvisation and overt expression. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end to the New Melodic.
Perhaps communal jazz experience relates more to "tunes", a music that has perhaps (post-maths jazz) just become too complicated? That may be why the NM bands have secured a grip on audiences all over the globe.
It's jazz based on emotion and sensation. Phronesis playing concerts in the dark thrived on the sensation of playing without light, the extra acuteness of the listening experience.
The New Melodic may be traced back to the cult Swedish trio EST (from Good Morning Susie Soho on) and accepts rock and electronica while not ostensibly fusing other musics into a new hybrid. It's not about standards more about newly written music. Where the style borrows is in certain technical features sometimes. Listen to 'Seven Seas' by Avishai Cohen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p6nlhe9jy8 and then listen to Phronesis for a metrical inspiration, a slight folkiness at times as well (also a characteristic in say the approach of the Tingvall trio) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly8KniNgkXo
Do tunes negate improvisation? That's the most controversial aspect of the New Melodic scene. This tune by EST probably provides the answer! Judge for yourself here on EST's Live In Hamburg just released in a special vinyl edition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f1Ef_7B30E Phronesis in the round at the LJF is, alas, sold out http://www.londonjazzfestival.org.uk/events/info/phronesis-in-the-round Christian Scott plays Ronnie Scott's on 20/21 November www.ronniescotts.co.uk
Home of the New Melodic: The cover of Live in Hamburg top and the new vinyl edition above right