A Rare Reunion from New York’s Best Underground Swing Jazz Supergroup

The Tickled Pinks almost played Club Cumming. Ostensibly, liquor license issues derailed one of the few events that could have transcended any issue concerning tourist hordes in the East Village on a Saturday night. But the irrepressible underground swing jazz supergroup did get to play two iconic Brooklyn venues, Hank’s and Pete’s last month, in one of the funnest reunions of any New York band in recent years.

Among other harmony vocal acts, only John Zorn’s Mycale chorale have the kind of individualistic power and interplay that the Pinks showed off during what was a pretty good run. They made it as far as Joe’s Pub – and got the key to the city of Olympia, Washington on their most recent tour. Whether the key works or not is unknown.

It would be overly reductionistic to say that with her spectacular range, Karla Rose Moheno handles the highs, the more misty Stephanie Layton handles the mids and Kate Sland handles the lows – all three women can span the octaves enough to take their original inspiration, the Andrews Sisters, to the next level. Although that basic formula seemed to be the strategy for night one of a reunion weekend stand that began with an Elvis cover night at Hank’s.

The idea of three women harmonizing Elvis tunes is a typical Pinks move, although one they never did before. And they weren’t the only ones who sang. Guitarist Dylan Charles took a break in between elegant expanses of jazz chords, snazzy rockabilly and some machete tremolo-picking to narrate a tongue-in-cheek version of Are You Lonesome Tonight. There were also a handful of cameos from friends of the band invited up to do their versions of the hits.

Moheno switched out her trusty Telecaster for an acoustic guitar; Sland played snappy bass and Layton held down the groove behind the drumkit. John Rogers’ ornate electric piano and organ lit up several of the songs; trumpeter Mike Maher gave a mariachi flair to several numbers as well.

The set wasn’t just familiar favorites, either. As much as hearing what this crew could do with Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock and Suspicious Minds, the best song of the night was an obscure, ominous noir number, Black Star. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine that Elvis knew what kind of an end he’d come to when he sang this in the mid-60s…but this group’s stalking, low-key version left that question hanging. From this point of view, it would have been even more fun to be able to catch the whole set, but it was impossible to walk out of Moroccan saxophonist Yacine Boulares’ absolutely haunting Lincoln Center set earlier that night.

The Pinks wound up their weekend with a serpentine set of swing at Pete’s. Since they started in the late zeros, they’ve expanded their songbook far beyond 30s girl-group material to jump blues and beyond. Case in point: an absolutely accusatory version of Straighten Out and Fly Right. They went deep inside to find the bittersweetness in the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon, then pulled out all the smoke and sultriness in Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby. And the old 20s hot swing standard Why Don’t You Do Right outdid both the Moonlighters and Rasputina’s versions in terms of both energy and righteous rage.

The Pinks are back on hiatus now while everybody in the group is busy with their own projects. Layton and Charles continue with their torch jazz band Eden Lane, with a gig on June 3 at 7 PM at Caffe Vivaldi, one of the Pinks’ old haunts. Sland continues to do unselfconsciously heroic work in hospice medicine in California. And Moheno continues with recording her next noir rock album, under the name Karla Rose – if the track listing remains as originally planned, that record would top the list of best albums of 2018 if she released it now.

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Eden Lane Bring Their Misty, Haunting, Lynchian Jazz Songs Back to the West Village

Stephanie Layton stood tall and resolute, a tinge of mist in her voice, in front of her jazz combo Eden Lane at Caffe Vivaldi late last month. “If it was up to me, I’d only sing sad songs,” she told the crowd, concise and to the point – and half of them roared their approval. If there ever was a market for depressed music, New York in 2016 is it.

“But that wouldn’t be well-rounded,” she explained gently. As you would expect from a vocalist who’s in demand as much as she is, Layton is actually very well-rounded. And one suspects that her similarly well-rounded bandmates in the Tickled Pinks – arguably New York’s most irrepressibly fun swing harmony trio, who will be on West Coast tour this August – share her preference for dark material. Karla Moheno leads one of this city’s most mysteriously cinematic, haunting bands, Karla Rose & the Thorns, while Kate Sland sings and plays bass in uneasily swirling rock group Merit Badge. Layton’s other gig is playing piano alongside her singer sister Susanne in honkytonk power trio Dylan Charles & the Layton Sisters. And in a stroke of serendipity, Layton is bringing Eden Lane back to Caffe Vivaldi on July 29 at 9:30 PM.

Last time out at that venue, Layton was in her element. In her auburn bangs, retro red-framed glasses, black top and smart vintage print skirt, she had the David Lynch ingenue persona down cold, a perfect match for her blue velvet vocals. Her purist, inspired backing unit also included Charles on guitar along with bassist Larry Cook, tenor saxophonist Janelle Reichman and pianist.Yan Falmagne. They slowly made their way into My Baby Just Cares For Me, Layton giving it an understated nuance with a nod back to Nina Simone, Reichman’s sax matching Layton’s understatedly pillowy delivery. Then she completely flipped the script with the first of two state-specific songs, a coyly shuffling, wordy rarity from the Blossom Dearie catalog,  Rhode Island Is Famous for You, Charles plinking wryly through a verse when Layton threw one his way.

Then she went back to disarmingly direct, bittersweet mode for Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe, less Peggy Lee ballad than angst-ridden wish song lowlit by wee-hours piano underneath Reichman’s long, moodily spiraling solo. Layton duetted with Charles on a briskly swinging, almost defiantly contented take of Mississippi Mud, then went back to geographical jazz with a rare Erik Frandsen tune, the vividly affecting Unique New York. Eight million hearts just can’t be wrong, and she gave voice to every one, hoping they won’t lose their apartments to speculators looking to make a quick flip before the market crashes.

The band kept the wistful, grey-sky mood going, with a knowingly wounded, mentholated tropical tinge, Falmagne leaping in to keep the volume up when Charles added an aptly stark solo. Layton’s resigned interpretation of Rodgers and Hart’s Little Girl Blue was just plain shattering: her “Just sit here and count your fingers,” was enough to get tears from a stone. Likewise, their bittersweetly swaying take of When Sunny Gets Blue echoed the classic Jeanne Lee version, emotionally if not rhythmically. From there they picked up the pace, bouncing their way through No Soap, No Hope on the wings of Reichman’s rapidfire riffage.

Layton matched an anxious, brittle vibrato to her opaquely enveloping low register in an enigmatic take of When the Sun Comes Out, Charles’ rain-off-the-roof solo capping it off. Julie London’s Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast was next, keeping the heartbroken mood front and center over Falmagne’s judicious phrasing. They closed with a tongue-in-cheek, hungover Sunday pancake afternoon version of Give Me the Simple Life. Some laughs, plenty of goosebumps and enough empathy to pull just about anybody out of the abyss. Dare you to go to Caffe Vivaldi on the 29th and find out for yourself.