Sex Mob's rollicking jazz shows fun has many facets

CAMBRIDGE -- Sex Mob brings fun and funk back to jazz, recalling the days when it was wrong-side-of-the-tracks party music. With an off-kilter sense of humor, the New York quartet covers rock tunes alongside jazz classics, drawing on everything from the earthy gutbucket style of early New Orleans to the fire-breathing glossolalia of 1960s new music.

On Monday night, Sex Mob took the stage for its first set at the Regattabar looking more like rockers than a jazz band. Alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss and versatile drummer Kenny Wollesen, both founding members, were joined by bassist John Hebert, who was remarkably at home filling in for the ailing Tony Scherr.

Bandleader Steven Bernstein plays the obscure slide trumpet, which looks and sounds like a pint-size trombone. To vary its timbre, he employs not only the standard mutes but a microphone plugged into an overdriven guitar amp, making his trumpet sound like Jimi Hendrix cranked to 11.

The first number, "Holiday of Briggan," was an angular original displaying the band's mastery of dynamics, shifting grooves, and spontaneous interaction. Midway through, altoist Krauss took a ululating, serrated solo. This daunting opener segued into an alternately slinky and heavy take on the 1930s Count Basie evergreen "Jive at Five."

Numbers flowed from one to the next, bridged by an atmospheric Wollesen drum solo, a veritable jazz bass seminar from Hebert, or one of Bernstein's hip, absurdist stand-up routines.

They played Prince's "Darling Nikki," starting on tip-toe and ending in a stomp. Their version of the Who's "I Can See for Miles" was unrecognizable until the blaring refrain, with Wollesen in full Keith Moon effect. The set ended with a woozy rubato reading of the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday," which snapped upright with the crisp chorus.

The second set offered more jazz than rock tunes. Basie got another nod, a relatively straight reading of his "Blue and Sentimental," with Krauss's alto channeling the awesome vibrato of jazz's first great saxophonist, Sidney Bechet. They ended with a Sex Mobbed take on Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth."

But the set's highlight was a beautiful, hushed version of the reverential Duke Ellington ballad "Heaven," which demonstrated that Sex Mob is not only fun but deep, too.

Sex Mob
At: Regattabar,Monday night