Star rating: ***
The Bad Plus have been getting some stick lately over their rearrangements of, mostly, pop and rock songs. In using such material for their own ends, the New York-based piano, bass and drums trio are only following a long jazz tradition, although it seems they've been following it to a contrived level.
This may be so. But on this showing they found riches in, or at the very least genuine inspiration from, cover versions. And this time these ran the gamut from Stravinsky to David Bowie to, gulp, Tears for Fears.
Indeed, it was some of their own compositions, while featuring an undeniably impressive understanding between the three players, that felt at times cold, impenetrable and maybe just a little too clever for their own good.
At their best, as on drummer Dave King's very deliberate 1979 Semi-Finalist or bassist Reid Anderson's rolling-gaited Love is the Answer, Bad Plus originals have warmth and dynamic properties.
They produced even more of these qualities, though, on Everybody Wants to Rule the World, which imagined Tears for Fears as clear-eyed minimalists, and a truly epic Life on Mars. Iverson took this one into the realms of Debussy before a collective free-wheeling clangour straightened out to finish with the sort of sweeping grandeur that even Bowie and his Spiders in their pomp might have coveted.
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