Bad Plus - Give

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Free Music Notes for Give

Free Music Review: More fuel to outrage the jazz establishment
Hit: 5 Stars

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.

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