The Hot Sardines
Birdland
Through September 16
‘C’est La Vie (A Jazz Soundtrack)’

About 10 years ago, the phenomenon known informally as the new Hot Jazz “became a thing,” as we would have said at that time, and the original breakout stars of the movement were the Hot Sardines. Those of us who were paying attention first experienced them at semi-underground happenings like Juliette Campbell’s delightful Shanghai Mermaid events, but they quickly were playing more mainstream venues like Joe’s Pub.

One of the great strengths of the Sardines, founded in 2011 by singer Elizabeth Bougerol and pianist Evan Palazzo, was how they made classic jazz attractive to younger audiences. Over the last decade, there have been plenty of younger bands playing this music, but for the most part the crowds are generally much older than the performers. The Sardines used a combination of first-rate musicianship and exhilarating showmanship — some would say shtick — to keep their audiences riveted.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that some in the jazz press actually objected to this, accusing Les Sardines of not being sufficiently reverent with regard to the jazz tradition. The all-too-easy response to that charge is that these same scribes would have probably also decreed that Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong were similarly guilty of not taking the music seriously enough.

A few of my favorite moments with the Sardines are in fact the zaniest; once they had an arrangement of “Diga Diga Doo” that called for the band, at one point, to drop to the floor and wriggle about like so many earthworms writhing to the newest sound around. Then there was the time late one night at Shanghai Mermaid when, at the climax of a truly frantic set, the whole band tossed their outer garments into a pile and paraded around the dance floor playing in their skivvies.

The Hot Sardines of 2023 are perhaps less out-and-out ecstatic than in their younger days, but they are one of the most entertaining and solidly musical bands around — maybe even more so today. The band’s name derives from Ms. Bougerol’s Parisian origins, and more recently, at Birdland this week and on their new album, “C’est La Vie (A Jazz Soundtrack),” they have devoted more of their energies to French songs. 

Ms. Bougerol is more of a first-rate chanteuse than ever on chansons like “J’Attendrai,” immortalized by Django Reinhardt in 1938; it commences with a Django-esque guitar intro by Bob Parins. The new album and the Tuesday night late show alternated between jazz standards like “Caravan” and “Dinah,” French songs — including more Djangology, such as the noirish, minor-key “Si Tu Savais” — and flat out surprises. Among the latter are such Disneyana as “A Spoonful of Sugar” restructured as a New Orleans street parade march à la Louis Prima, and “The Bear Necessities,” rendered en Francais.

Throughout the Birdland set in particular, the Sardines lived up to their tradition of keeping the audience thoroughly entertained — a mantra not always as common in contemporary jazz as it ought to be. To that end, they employ an excellent tap dancer, Dewitt Fleming Jr., who occasionally doubles on percussion when not stealing the show on taps. 

They also utilize their six instrumentalists, including bassist Victor Murillo and drummer David Berger, as backup singers behind Ms. B on key numbers like “It Had to Be You,” holding the tonic note in harmony.

The band is more musical than ever — most of Ms. Bougerol’s numbers were cooed and crooned rather than shouted, not that she ever really was a belter. Clarinetist Ben Golder-Novick played large portions of his solos in the subtone register, and trombonist J. Walter Hawkes used a variety of mutes to give his horn a vocalized tone.  

Mr. Palazzo also displays his keyboard chops in a thoughtful, low-key solo called “Swing of the Hip.” The CD ends not with a thunderous bang, but a boozy lament titled “Meet Me at the Bottom of the Bottle,” in which trumpeter Paul Brandenburg, also muted, wails with admirable restraint.  Ms. B also compères the whole evening with a lively gift of gab, as when she describes a medley of two songs a musical turducken, with one song nested within the other.

The Sardines are now much more subtle than outrageous, but they are still hot. Even bereft of extreme shtick, they’re still the most enjoyable band in town. It will be something to see what they choose to play and not play at their announced Carnegie Hall debut in April. 

They concluded the late show on opening night with a vintage Waller classic, “Your Feets Too Big,” played as reverently as the tune allowed.  Ms. B reprises the old riddle, “You know what they say about men with big feet?” The answer, as I know well, is that we have big shoes.