The Bad Plus -
Reviewed by Dave
4 out of 5 Faces (Ratings)
Release Date: 2003
Label: Columbia
The Bad Plus is what would happen if you stuck a couple of talented music school nerds together in a room and fed them Coltrane and blotters of gel acid for a week, then dropped them in front of their instruments and told them to play “Smells like Teen Spirit”. Yeah. Not since Ron Burgundy covered “Aqualung” has yazz been taken to such places.
What emerges is a deconstructed cover of a rock anthem that keeps enough of its identity to be recognizable, but has become something entirely different. It would be like at a portrait of yourself as done by Dali. “well I guess its me but I don’t remember having a clock dripping over my face”.
The band is a jazz trio: piano, bass, drums. Usually the pianist is the main attraction, and the rest of the band is supporting cast, but here all three musicians are of considerable talent. The bass lines are delicious, and the drummer is seriously slick. The nice part about the album is that while it is “jazz” and therefore by definition “weird”, it keeps enough of its pop sensibilities (I can’t believe I just used that phrase) to be pretty accessible for anyone with at least a passing appreciation of jazz. I mean, you can’t dance to it (unless you’re Kai), but you can drive to it.
The Bad Plus got a lot of press for their covers, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Heart
of Glass”, “Iron Man”, etc., and good for them, because it got me to buy their album.
In fact I think their most quality work is their own. “Keep the bugs off your glass
and the bears off your ass” (CB radio trucker talk) has a driving bass line with
a distinctly swing feel, while “Everywhere you Turn” is a delicate progressive anthem
only drifting into the realms of the minor before resolving. People -
Almost all of the covers are deconstructed so as to at some point in the song be unrecognizable. “Heart of Glass” starts out discordant and falls apart from there. I’m pretty certain at one point the pianist is playing the piano with a chair. Right as your saying to yourself “what the eff?”, the song materializes from a chromatic soup of noise (think of a coked out Russian singing the Mandarin alphabet) to a tight, recognizable chorus with a rhythmic and fully catchy conclusion. They don’t just want to serve you the sausage, they want you to see it being made. The exception to this is the cover of Aphex Twin’s “Flim”, which is tight throughout, and truly an excellent cover. (yeah – they cover Aphex Twin. How cool is that?)
Anyway, if you grow weary of “minor fall, major lift” song after song after song, and are curious about a little “minor fall, minor fall again, minor fall down stairs, minor laying in a heap with a mouth full of broken teeth, major lift” give this a shot. It is really very excellent face noise.
The Album is “These are the Vistas”, the Band is The Bad Plus. For when you just
can’t read another fucking alt-