Give

The Bad Plus | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0001AP0PY
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #139,215 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Recorded in England after a stretch of continuous touring, Give is a more-than-worthy successor to 2003's These Are the Vistas, the major-label debut that launched the Bad Plus as a significant musical force. The Midwestern piano trio doesn't just link the worlds of abstract jazz and big-beat rock--instead, they smash them together, fusing bombast and subtlety with wit and art in consistently surprising ways. It's most apparent in the covers. The Pixies' "Velouria" develops a heady layer of Spanish impressionism, while Ornette Coleman's "Street Woman," showcasing Reid Anderson's propulsive bass, is much closer to jazz expectations--the early Paul Bley trio, say, if jazz expectations get that high. Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" becomes a manifesto, pianist Ethan Iverson combining the elementary theme with an anarchic, trip-hammer right hand straight from the playground of free jazz. The originals cover even more ground--from the colliding ironies of Iverson's "Cheney Piñata" to the sweetness of drummer David King's "Frog and Toad." Produced, like the last CD, by Tchad Blake, Give demonstrates just how effectively pop production values and jazz spontaneity can interact. King's drumming alone is a sonic and creative highlight throughout. Along with a new aesthetic, the Bad Plus has already begun to define a new audience, and this CD should both delight and enlarge it. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More fuel to outrage the jazz establishment, March 18, 2004

By 

Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Give (Audio CD)

The Bad Plus, quintessential bad boyz of jazz, are at it again, wreaking havoc, running roughshod over bebop sensibilities, and just mangling and destroying everything in their path.

Bravo!

One thing the stodgy jazz press seems to have missed is how funny this disc is. Things start out with a bang on "1979 Semi-finalist" as the boyz paint a glorious sound picture of a local bowler who's just missed enshrinement in the neighborhood bowling hall of fame dejectedly making his way home. Right outta The Big Lebowski. Things reach an early high with "Cheney Piñata," a demented boleroish mariachi number, in which the lads perform a not-so-sly send-up of our revered Vice President. You can almost see the outraged citizenry taking their turn at bashing the piñata-veep. Should provide vicarious catharsis for all those disgusted with the war. The ball keeps right on rolling with "Street Woman," a marvelous deconstruction of the famous Ornette Coleman tune, with Reid Anderson slinging some righteous, gloriously twangy bass, David King basically freaking out on his kit, and Ethan Iverson thundering out fabulous faux-classical chords. It's simply amazing how they manage any coherence from such aural mayhem, but they do, all the while maintaining a too-cool, bash-it-up, deconstructionist mentality. And their fake-rockabilly number, "Layin' a Strip for the Higher-self State Line" seals the deal. Probably among the most hilarious instrumentals ever recorded, you can tell the guys are just having a ball with it. That should give you a taste of what the proceedings are like.

The biggest problem for the nay-sayers, I'm sure, continues to be David King, he of the brashly insouciant drum pyrotechnics (check out his moves on "Veloria"), undoubtedly mistaken for kit cluelessness. Can't people get it through their heads that this is the way he wants to play, that his playing is perfectly apposite for the soundscape and aural signature the band stakes out and almost always magically achieves? But I don't think the grousing stops there. Ethan Iverson's pianisms also grate, I'm sure. The fact that he's mastered practically the entire range of jazz, pop, Latin, and classical keyboard literature and can pull any of it out whenever he wants comes across for many as empty virtuosity. But he's also a master of mood, as his delicate playing on "Veloria," eventually building to colossal proportions and then morphing into deconstructed madness, brilliantly demonstrates. He also finds an unlikely stark and melancholly beauty in the Black Sabbath tune "Iron Man," imbuing it with irony and turning it into a kind of instrumental analog to Dion's "The Wanderer." And check out his emotional range on "Do Your Sums - Die Like a Dog - Play for Home," where he effortlessly moves between aching delicacy and Rimsky-Korsakov-ish explosiveness. Then there's Reid Anderson, who seems to have completely rethought double bass playing. His instrument occupies a sound space never before conceived for it, and he gets a tonal richness to match its prominence in the sound image. Which brings up Tchad Blake's production, another irritant, I'm sure, but to these ears one of the great production/engineering achievements in the history of jazz. Indeed, the way he's sculpted the sound palette, with all the players receiving absolute equal space, perfectly suits the band's basic MO, which is expressionistic extroversion.

Yes, one might wish for more aural diversity - things here are pretty much of the throttle-all-the-way-open, pedal-to-the-metal, full-throated-roar variety save for the ersatz ballad, "Neptune (The Planet)," which gets its own bit of bashing near the end.

But I'm not complaining.

Right now, this is a unique band, occupying a place somewhere between traditional jazz piano trio, rock power trio, and punk-metal. OK, it's not jazz, per se. But so what? Let's just give it a rest, critics. What it is, is smart, twenty-first century Nu Jazz-Pop-Rock.

Deal with it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bad Plus hit it out of the park AGAIN!, August 4, 2004

By 

a superintelligent shade of the color blue (minneapolis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Give (Audio CD)

There's a great scene in an old episode of "Murphy Brown", where Murphy Brown snuck one of her toddler's finger paintings into an abstract art show. Two critics start arguing over it - one calling it brilliant, the other calling it childish. Murphy Brown looks and notices it's been sold. So she asks the buyer what he saw in it. He said he hadn't even looked at it... he just saw two critics arguing heatedly over it and considered it a good investment.

The way critics spar over The Bad Plus, consider this album a good investment!

That being said, i don't know which amuses me more... watching the band making devil horns at the stuffy jazz establishment, or watching them getting kids raised on alt-rock headbanging away on avant-garde acoustic piano trio music. They're neither the saviors of jazz non-jazz critics say they are, nor the enemies of jazz culture that some jazz critics think. They're just three guys playing what THEY like, and not giving a Cheney what anyone else thinks. For a narrow segment of broad-minded Gen-X music fans, they're like coming home. And for a lot of other people, they're an invitation to an exotic new world.

As for this particular album, "Give" is a bit heavier than "These are the Vistas", less accessible and more abstract. But it's a minor difference. I love them both.

If you care enough to even be reading this review, you owe it to yourself to listen to this album yourself. If you love it, you love it. If you hate it, give it to someone who WILL love it!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The CD That Keeps on "Give"-ing., March 11, 2004

By 

The Groove (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Give (Audio CD)

The Bad Plus's Sony debut, "These Are the Vistas," twisted the rules of jazz even further by adding a few rock touches and performing admirable covers of Nirvana, Blondie and Apex Twin. It's a hard formula to improve on, and they don't exactly do that on their solid followup "Give." Here, the trio of Reid Anderson (bass), Ethan Iverson (piano), and David King (drums) remains quite faithful to the formula that made their predecessor a success. We have the laid-back feel of "1979 Semi-Finalist," a touch of Latin flavor on "Cheney Pinata," and the elegant "And Here We Test Our Powers of Observation." They're slices of delectable jazz that pay respect to their elders (Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck) while remaining modern and fresh. But the track that made me stop everything is their creative rendition of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," which is nearly worth the price of this whole CD. They do a cover that's faithful to the mood of the original while injecting their own flavor, and it's sure to please jazz lovers and Sabbath fans alike. This CD also has an enhanced portion that will take you to their website, where you can read updates, download stuff, and watch live performances (best viewed with a broadband connection). While "Give" may lack some of the unexpected punch of "These Are the Vistas," it's a completely likable effort that dodges the sophomore slump.