Prog

The Bad Plus

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 8, 2007)
• Original Release Date: May 8, 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Heads Up
• ASIN: B000NQQ4OC
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,817 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

You have to hear the Bad Plus's lush, lovely instrumental approach to Tears for Fears' hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." It's a slowly-evolving meditation on the tune that clearly is in love with its melody and structure. It might be the finest jazz cover of an '80s song since Miles Davis cut Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" back in the day. The other covers, especially their florid take on Rush's "Tom Sawyer," may be likely to get the most attention of anything on the album. But they rely too much on irony, on people's previous perceptions of the music, and do not seem quite as enamored of the original. They're jokes that are funny the first time but not so much the second or third. As with the Bad Plus' previous releases, the group's original compositions are the meat of the album: "Giant" and "Physical Cities" carve out huge walls of sonic space with abandon. This is rockist jazz, a postmodern fusion that relies greatly on tricky time signatures and mashups of seemingly incongruous sound. It's not likely this music will age spectacularly well, but so what? If you're looking for some engaging and conversation-inducing dinner music preceding an evening spent watching Napoleon Dynamite or any Wes Anderson flick, this is just the thing. --Mike McGonigal

Product Description

2007 album from the Jazz/Pop trio, three Jazz musicians who play gorgeously reinterpreted cover versions ('Everybody Wants To Rule The World', 'Tom Sawyer') plus nifty originals! as well. 10 tracks. Universal. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another terrific album by The Bad Plus, May 14, 2007

By	A music lover (Fremont, CA) - See all my reviews

These guys have a way with covers. But their own material is great, too. I don't agree with the Amazon reviewer that sees some of their covers as jokes that are funny once but not the second or third time. Music which functions only as a joke often falls flat, but the covers on this album are much more (if they are jokes at all) - I think they take themselves seriously as music, even if they do have fun with the tunes in the process. Anyway, art is in the eye of the beholder - one man's masterpiece is another man's headscratcher. If you like contemporary jazz, particularly jazz piano trios, and you like your music challenging yet communicative and highly listenable, get this. If you have an affection for the originals, it will only add to your enjoyment. There's a variety of approaches here, and they all work just fine.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stop calling them "covers", May 29, 2007

By	Brian Henderson "SeriousComposer" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm not going to make proclamations like, "The Bad Plus is the future of jazz music," or anything like that. However, concerning their "covers," as you reviewers enjoy calling them so much, might I point out that there is a long-standing tradition in jazz to play tunes you like that you (or anyone else on the recording session for that matter) did not write yourself. And what do we now call those tunes? Standards. But the process by which a song becomes a standard is not that of a committee sitting in a room, deciding what goes in the Real Book and what doesn't. It's a process by which artists play tunes they enjoy playing, and after numerous artists have put their voice to a tune, maybe it becomes a standard. I see what the Bad Plus does with their interpretations of more contemporary rock songs as a continuation of that same tradition. The Bad Plus play tunes they enjoy, as far as I can tell, and they kill each and every one of them. Even if they play it faithfully to the original, they still kill it and give it their own Bad Plus stamp. Would you ever confuse the Rush version of Tom Sawyer with the Bad Plus Version? I doubt it.

It is somewhat regrettable that there aren't more original compositions by the band on this record, since they're all great composers with their own individual voices. But, might I also remind you, that the jazz player composes in the moment, even if they didn't write the song itself.

The Bad Plus is a great presence on the musical scene today, especially in the Jazz idiom. They bring joy, exuberance, and incredible musicality to everything they do. You don't judge their music. It judges you.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In some ways Bad Plus's best album yet, July 6, 2007

By	Scott Williams "sneakyneighborsdog" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Overall, I would rate this as the Bad Plus's best album. With the excpetion of suspicious activity it has the best songwriting and it has the best adapations of cover songs of all bad plus albumns. The covers are are good choices and the adaptations are brilliant. Physical cities and Giant are interstesting new songs. Suspicious activity introduced more new songs, and in that way is better than Prog, but Prog is solid from start to finish and the overall consistency makes it Bad Plus's best albumn yet.