The Bad Plus - Prog
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Music CD Cover Artist: The Bad Plus Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2007-05-08 Music Label: Heads Up Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Prog Album
Free Music Review: Prog-nosis? Unclear
Hit: 3 Stars
The Bad Plus took out a business loan to self-finance and release "Prog", the band's first album since leaving Columbia Records in 2006. So, with no major label calling the shots, and a more personal financial stake in the album's creation, what's the result?
Unfortunately, "Prog" feels like a partial retreat, as if the band was worried about losing the critical acclaim and media attention garnered over the past several years. How else to explain the inclusion of *four* cover versions, the most of any Bad Plus album so far? One of those, the version of Rush's "Tom Sawyer", is the most heavyhanded and purposeless cover the band has ever done. They just basically play the song straight 'n' loud. No clever arranging touches, no invention, no nothing, no reason for being. The alternately meandering and bombastic version of David Bowie's "Life On Mars" isn't far behind on the annoyance scale.
The group does pull off a beautiful slowed-down recasting of Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World", and Burt Bacharach's "This Guy's In Love With You" is always a nice tune. But, still, this is most certainly a case of cover overload.
Why does this tick me off? Because, except for the obligatory looooooong boring Reid Anderson ballad ("The World Is The Same"), this album has the strongest-ever batch of Bad Plus *originals*, and I'm ticked that the covers prevented more of them from showing up. In particular, Ethan Iverson is woefully under-represented, with the intriguing "Mint" being his only composition on the album. I weep for the absence of "The 2/5 Room", "Casa Particular", and other Iverson tunes which've been part of the band's live sets over the past year or two.
Anyway... the originals. Anderson's gorgeous, hypnotic "Giant" may be the best thing the band has ever done. Seriously. It's that freaking good. He also contributes the grooving, slamming "Physical Cities", which shows how the band can *creatively* be loud. David King throws in the catchy, Latinized "Thriftstore Jewelry", and the happy-dancin' "1980 World Champion", which reaches an almost-gospelish frenzy during Iverson's solo.
So... grrrr. The good stuff on "Prog" is a high four stars, maybe even five. But, the album's faults drop the final verdict to a three. I think the album signifies a troubling direction for the band. I hope I'm wrong.