Much of The Bad Plus’s reputation and mainstream appeal lies in their ability to deconstruct the work of others. Having formed in 2000, this much was already apparent a year later when the Minneapolis jazz trio released their eponymous debut album. Here they took such disparate songs as Abba’s timeless pop classic ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ and Nirvana’s grunge anthem ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and relocated them in the avant-jazz idiom.
“Taking so called covers and trying to make them our own” is the way that Bad Plus bassist Reid Anderson describes this practice tonight. But alongside countless admirers, this process of dismantlement and reinterpretation did also bring The Bad Plus much disapproval from those who did not care in the slightest for this populist custom of realigning jazz to pop.
Perhaps stung by their critics, The Bad Plus then shifted completely away from their radical sonic recreations of pop, rock and indie tunes and produced a run of records from 2010’s Never Stop to last year’s collaboration with the contemporary jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman that featured entirely original pieces. Their latest album, though – It’s Hard, which was released back in August – sees the American threesome return to what is probably their most defining role, that of interpreters.
This evening we get three songs from It’s Hard – ‘Time After Time’, ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘Mandy’. In disassembling Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 hit, The Bad Plus follow in the illustrious footsteps of no less than Miles Davis for whom this song became a staple of his live set up until his passing a quarter of a century ago. Their claim that their version is even better than that of the late, great jazz legend is no idle boast. Here they stick with the song’s guiding principles of loss and heartache but with decelerated time signatures and an almost perverse sense of twisted melody they elevate ‘Time After Time’ onto yet another level of emotional connection.
The Bad Plus – Anderson alongside Dave King on drums and percussion and, sat rather imperiously behind his Steinway, Ethan Iverson – adopt a similarly renovative approach to Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ transforming the original into a heart-warming Erik Satie-inspired tale of inspiration and imagination.
But it is on ‘Mandy’ where their powers of reinvention are most acute. They take a scorched earth policy to Barry Manilow’s 1974 chart-topper, retaining the skeleton of its melody but removing every other single trace of its saccharine-induced Las Vegas supper club schmaltz. In the Howard Assembly Room tonight it becomes an intense swell of minor chords, free-percussive beats and improvised piano. There is great truth in Anderson’s assertion that “this was the way it was meant to be played”.
In the true egalitarian style of a group that has no appointed leader, each Bad Plus member contributes two compositions each to this evening’s set and no matter how memorable these cover versions are, it is perhaps two of their own pieces that stand out on the night. Dave King’s ‘Epistolary Echoes’ is an explosive mesh of almost cosmic dissonance, galvanised by the writer’s elegant, off-kilter avant-garde rhythms that he makes appear so deceptively simple. And the concluding ‘Seven Minute Mind’, written by Reid Anderson and who’s hypnotic pulse captures perfectly the true collective dynamic of The Bad Plus.
Photo credit: Simon Godley
More photos from this performance can be found HERE