Hot Club acts often feel like they exist to give the members a reason to wear retro finery, but that’s not the case with Vavavoom. On Swingphonicity, the band sounds and looks (in the liner notes) like one that is making music for the fun of doing it. The song choices don’t camouflage Vavavoom’s roots: six Django Reinhardt compositions, a Kid Ory, a Hoagy Carmichael and (the way overrecorded) “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon” make up the bulk of the album, along with two originals by piano/accordionist Bart Ramsey. The most modern gesture on the album is a version of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Requiem Pour un Twister,” which fits surprisingly well.

As well as everything works, though, little stands out. Raphael Bas’ guitar break in “Rhythm Gitans” caught me, and the pauses in Ramsey’s “Drunken Waltz” gave the title it’s meaning. The song also featured Aurora Nealand’s most adventurous soprano sax solo, and the one thing Swingphonicity could use is adventure. Her solo steps out of the idiom and injects a contemporary element that makes the moment startling, but not inappropriate. Hot Club bands often feel trapped in the past, but Nealand’s solo shows that they don’t have to, and that bridging the past and present doesn’t mean reducing the music to caricature or selling it out.