On the latest from The Bad Plus at a glance
A very different beast these days
Far more coherent than bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King’s 2022 release The Bad Plus these days TBP is almost like another band entirely emerging at last from a long shape shifting stylistically ambitious and revelatory gestation.
Shorn ages ago of the status of being a piano trio, one that looked at the art through the opposite end of a telescope to most first with Ethan Iverson and then just as interestingly with Orrin Evans, adding a sax while not without precedent in their long career and guitar in Chris Speed and Ben Monder is a process that has taken a while to settle. But settle it has.
Maverick attitude
There’s still a snarly aggressive edge to what the pair are capable of generating as a Sly and Robbie of proggy intensity.
And yet on ‘Grid/Ocean’ that imagination is tempered in the sax lines by a raw, unsentimental vulnerability.
Set free Speed spree
Speed who is really an avant gardist – check him out in all the reliably edgy intensity within the underground adored AlasNoAxis – just like Monder, whose brilliant Planeterium has just been issued, make the band that bit more of an outsider outfit than they ever were before. But right from their FSNT days in the 1990s starting out they pushed against the norms whether tackling unusual material not being overly respectful which was a statement in itself and often pushing the volume up far more than the usual hush laden piano trio levels many outfits prefer. They never played as if being shushed by a librarian or sat hunched pining for the fjords.
New label
Playing originals on this studio recording and issued by the new to them Mack Avenue opening tunes are Anderson’s and later ‘Deep Water Sharks’. Speed chips in on ‘Cupcakes One’. King penned ‘Tyrone’s Flamingo’. Monder contributes the driving ‘Li Po’ the last of these 8 tunes. Monder also interprets this same piece radically differently on Planetarium. All prove something of a rewarding rollercoaster ride.
Compositionally exceptionally strong
I still grieve occasionally for the Norwegian Blue and being serious the jazz is deadisms contrary nature of the Iverson-era Bad Plus which for me remains the definite article.
It provides the main chunk of their remarkable history.
But hand on heart this is just as enjoyable as the magic that hit the ground running ”long ago” on ‘Dirty Blonde’ (from an album released 9 years ago – does that count as long ago?) with Joshua Redman when a certain super size me approach also was attempted.
Nobody parrots a long extinct method. Compositionally as the product of a collection of minds and coalition of appealingly dissentient voices somehow cohering in a group think this latest issued today is as strong as anything the entity has achieved in years and they have always set the bar high. Final thought and how’s this, what would you put on without resorting to an algorithm next after this album? Easy ‘Colours Fly’ by The Smile because Tom Skinner’s approach is not a million miles away from King’s and the Yorkian snarl is a parallel running to what Speed can do instrumentally.
