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Jazz band covers Aphex Twin

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Pitchfork review

 

Bad Plus:

These Are the Vistas

[Columbia; 2003]

Rating: 7.0

 

The problem with jazz is... well, I'm not exactly sure. I can tell you that I'm getting tired of opening jazz reviews with a survey of the genre's problems. In the end, it's probably no worse off than any other music predating rock and roll, and that it at least still has a Grammy category should be encouraging. Perhaps the only real problem is that big labels have a tough time marketing it (see if you can name any one of Billboard's current Top 40 jazz albums). However, unlike, say, contemporary polka (also a tough sell, especially in our war-torn economy), people are still making interesting, creative statements in jazz. For experimental music listeners, jazz is probably as vibrant now as it ever was. You just have to live with a dimmer spotlight, if that matters.

 

And so, along comes The Bad Plus, from the heart of the Midwest, and with big Columbia dollars paying for their hotels and, presumably, Blender blurbs. They have the shiny blue CD cover, have snagged Sheryl Crow and Tom Waits' producer, get in-store promotion at Tower and Borders, and press releases that-- wouldn't you know it-- herald them as jazz's saviors! Of course, none of this really covers the various musical contributions that pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King (a member of the Minneapolis jazz combo Happy Apple, and replacement drummer for the legendary Christopher McGuire in 12 Rods) may have made to their own record. As you probably shouldn't be surprised to know, their press hasn't really done them too many favors except to garner them raves from the NPR and Good Morning America crowd.

 

The three members of The Bad Plus, hailing from Minnesota and Wisconsin, have been playing together off and on since the early 1990s. They released their self-titled debut in 2001 independently, and had a follow-up available last year (now out of print), recorded live at the Village Vanguard. They've steadily built a following of fervent jazz fans and alert critics, though are likely as surprised at their exposure this year as anyone. These Are the Vistas, beyond the production and fanfare, is pretty squarely along the lines of much new, young straight-ahead jazz: integrated use of new beats and electronic music touches, covers of various Gen-X hits, and the will to sporadically launch brief, free improv blowing sessions. Naturally, those sessions are much fewer and farther between than your average Tim Berne disc, but then again, Columbia doesn't invest in 20-minute Bloodcount tunes for a reason.

 

First, the covers: supposedly pianist Iverson had never heard the song previously (only in Wisconsin, folks), but the trio's rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is, er, spirited. Iverson favors broad, dramatic chord clusters and liberal use of his sustain pedal, so instead of ragged rock glory, we get faux-cinematic\ grandeur. Anderson does a nice Ron Carter impression underneath, linking the performance to what must have been a big inspiration for them: Miles Davis' mid-60s similarly eccentric quintet. They hit Aphex Twin's "Flim" with kid gloves, almost too delicately. Producer Tchad Blake incorporates a few filters to make King's drums sound computerized, but it's my feeling that you can't really hide a jazz band. Their version of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" is probably the most ambitious song on the entire record, if only because they try out about three completely different moods before arriving at the song proper. I'm not so sure they're as convincing way out there as they are straight up, but points for giving it a go.

 

The Bad Plus is at their best when they step out of the jazz chair entirely, as on the marvelously kinetic "Big Eater", which opens the album. King is an amazing drummer, certainly a treat for anyone loving modern jazz percussionists like Ben Perowsky, Kenny Wollesen or Jim Black, and his performance on Anderson's piece is fantastically, aggressively precise. Likewise, Iverson's block chords, serving as melody, are straight out of the great-lost post-rock riff book, and would undoubtedly make Tom Jenkinson mighty jealous. If only they could keep up that intensity throughout, as other tunes seem either flat homages to the avant-garde ("Boo-Wah"), or small-group MOR jazz balladry ("Silence is the Question")-- though there is a download-only ballad titled "What Love is This" that's a lot more engaging than most of the ones here.

 

Marketing aside, I wouldn't be surprised to see The Bad Plus become pretty successful. They have a knack for hitting the melody where some more experimental outfits might opt for a diverse array of craziness. The three performers are also very good musicians (particularly King and Anderson), and I imagine they put on a good show. It's not their fault some record company guy thought they could be the new face of jazz, so I'd urge hipsters to keep an open ear, and everyone else not to expect fireworks. Hey, it could be worse-- you know Elvis Costello is giving Diana Krall Mitchell Froom's number.

 

- Dominique Leone, September 15, 2003

 

NY Times review

 

MUSIC; A Little of This, a Little of That

 

By FRED KAPLAN

Published: February 9, 2003

 

THE Bad Plus doesn't sound like the name of a jazz band. The group's new CD, ''These Are the Vistas,'' out this week on Columbia, features such distinctly nonjazz tunes as Nirvana's ''Smells Like Teen Spirit,'' Blondie's ''Heart of Glass'' and Aphex Twin's ''Flim.'' An earlier album, on the Fresh Sounds label, included Abba's ''Knowing Me Knowing You.''

 

Yet starting on Tuesday, Bad Plus -- Reid Anderson on acoustic bass, Ethan Iverson on piano and David King on drums -- plays six nights at the Village Vanguard, one of New York's most straight-ahead jazz clubs.

 

It's an old story, the jazz musician's brass-ring quest for crossover appeal. In the beginning, there was no schism to cross over. Jazz was popular music. Most jazz standards were pop tunes, refashioned with hipper cadences and improvisations that built on a song's chord changes.

 

Then came rock 'n' roll and the rupture. Rock didn't offer chords worth improvising over. Yet as rock exploded and jazz receded, many musicians tried, with mainly pathetic results. (There are few sadder artifacts than ''Sarah Vaughan Sings the Beatles'' or Duke Ellington's arrangement of ''I Wanna Hold Your Hand.'') Miles Davis made the switch, combining electric instruments with an adventurous spirit while keeping his sound intact. But in the three decades since Davis's ''Bitches Brew,'' few others succeeded in any sustained stab at jazz-rock fusion.

 

The Bad Plus marks the latest assault on the barricades. Even Yves Beauvais, the group's producer, said, ''It would be such a fluke for a serious instrumental jazz band to have crossover success in the sense of playing on the same radio stations as Eminem.'' Still, Columbia is marketing the CD to younger crowds as well as traditional jazz fans. If any jazz band stands a ghost of a chance at straddling the realms, this may be it.

 

One distinctive thing about Bad Plus is that two of its members, Mr. Anderson and Mr. King, have deep roots in both jazz and rock. Both 32, they grew up in Minneapolis and started playing together in junior high. ''Even back then,'' Mr. Anderson recalled, ''we were scheming to combine jazz with Hendrix.''

 

The kicker, though, is Mr. Iverson, 30, who is deeply immersed in jazz and 20th-century classical music -- he was, until recently, the Mark Morris Dance Company's music director -- but, by his own admission, utterly ignorant of modern rock.

 

''When we all started playing together,'' Mr. King said, ''Ethan had never heard of Nirvana. Reid and I thought this was kind of incredible for a guy his age. This is what inspired us to play covers of rock songs. We'd wonder: 'Wow! What filters this stuff inside Iverson's head? What's he hearing?' We figured he'd give the music a fresh approach.''

 

So, what did he hear in Kurt Cobain and Nirvana? Mr. Iverson, sitting in his Brooklyn apartment with Mr. Anderson, who lives two blocks away, reflected for a moment.

 

''With everything I'm playing,'' he replied, ''I take, on some level, a dispassionate look at the raw materials -- the melodies and the harmonies. I basically rip off Stravinsky's way of dealing with harmony as much as I can.''

 

''Heavily implied in most of Mr. Cobain's music,'' he continued, ''are raw, open fifths. I take these fifths and stack them in every which way. These become the basis of my voicings and the language in my solos. Believe me, Stravinsky would have known how to shape Mr. Cobain's fifths.''

 

(Though Mr. Iverson looks like a downtown rebel -- shaved head, goatee, retro horn-rims -- he speaks in the nasal tones of an earnest Midwesterner. He grew up in Eau Claire, Wis., and, while in high school, met and played with Mr. Anderson, who briefly attended college there before transferring to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.)

 

And so you get this strange combination: Mr. King pounding a solid backbeat while simultaneously riffling through progressive jazz licks; Mr. Anderson laying down a dense bass line but also darting around that line like Charlie Haden backing Ornette Coleman; and Mr. Iverson imbuing the melody with those Stravinskian clanging fifths.

 

There's a good-humored irreverence here, but Mr. King, who still lives in Minneapolis, where he's a major figure on the indie-rock scene, emphasized: ''We're not into irony. When we do a pop song, we're not winking in some postmodern deconstruction. We're paying homage.''

 

Mr. Anderson added: ''When jazz people do covers of pop tunes, they often clean it up, sand off the rough edges. When we do it, we make it even more raw. Our improvisation comes from jazz, a lot of our phrasing is jazz, our instrumentation is jazz. But we play rock songs with a rock attitude. We embrace all our influences.''

 

Mr. Iverson is no stranger to what Mr. King calls ''a warped cross-genre approach.'' Mr. Beauvais first heard the pianist over a year ago, in a solo concert at Weill Recital Hall, where he played Americana in skewed styles: ''Red River Valley'' (with spacious Coplandesque harmonies), ''I've Been Working on the Railroad'' (as boogie-woogie). Afterward, Mr. Iverson invited him to come see the debut of his new group, the Bad Plus, at a small club on the Lower East Side.

 

''I did not like them at all,'' Mr. Beauvais recalled. ''I had a major issue with Dave King. He was playing so loud. I didn't stay for the whole set.''

 

But then Mr. Beauvais wondered if maybe the acoustics were at fault. Last June, when Bad Plus played one night at the Vanguard as part of the JVC Jazz Festival, he gave them another chance and, as he puts it, ''I fell off the chair.'' He was starting to revive Columbia's dormant jazz division; he signed the group.

 

He was struck by not only the band's virtuosity but also its unabashed theatricality. Even the name, Bad Plus, reeks of mystery. When she met the group, Lorraine Gordon, the Vanguard's owner, said, ''That's not a band name, it's a report card.'' Mr. King, who coined it, says, ''I just kind of liked the way the words sound together.''

 

The trio plays very loud, yet even at the most feverish levels -- what Mr. King calls ''white-noise atmosphere, all the instruments colliding, very calamity-driven, chaos-theory stuff'' -- they maintain a tonal clarity and precision.

 

Their own compositions, which also jumble genres, tend to tell wordless stories. The CD's liner notes describe ''1972 Bronze Medalist,'' which Mr. King wrote, as follows: ''Jacques won his medal for weightlifting. Now retired, he lives in a small seaside town in France. A hero to the local children, every day he walks bare-chested to the beach, medal swinging in time to his proud gait.'' You can hear this scene in the music, and it's an affectionate portrait. Of ''Guilty,'' written by Mr. Iverson, the notes read: ''We are all guilty of something. This is a blues: the city, the jungle, the cement, the soil, the whiskey, the rain, the jeans, the nude.'' You can hear all that, more luridly, too.

 

This is soundtrack music, an observation that Mr. Iverson takes as a compliment. ''So much of jazz is far too undramatic,'' he said. ''Jazz is in an audience crisis, and I blame the musicians for not taking more responsibility to deliver the goods. In the major jazz clubs, the audience pays a lot of money and sits there quietly. You have to deliver a miniature play for them. We don't put on spangle and bauble. But there is an awareness that we're doing a show.''

 

These Are the Vistas

Bad Plus

Fresh Sounds; to be released on Tuesday.

The group also performs at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, Tuesday through Sunday.

 

Correction: February 23, 2003, Sunday An article on Feb. 9 about the band Bad Plus misidentified the producer of its new CD, ''These Are the Vistas.'' It was Tchad Blake and the Bad Plus, not Yves Beauvais. The article also misidentified the town where a band member, Ethan Iverson, grew up. It was Menomonie, Wis., not Eau Claire.

 

Because of an editing error, a listing with the article misidentified the company that released the CD. It was Columbia Records, not Fresh Sounds.

 

Fred Kaplan is jazz editor of The Absolute Sound, an audiophile magazine.

 

 

Here is a picture of The Bad Plus covering "Flim" by Aphex Twin:

 

the_bad_plus_guthrie.jpg

 

 

Looks pretty cool!

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