Pazz and Jop with The Bad Plus

by Anthony Medici in Album Reviews, Musician Reviews, New Releases, Opinion Posts, Reviews

The title of the new The Bad Plus (hereafter TBP) CD on Heads Up, “For All I Care,”  is as ambiguous, ambivalent, and inscrutable as the rest of the album.  Perhaps the band is telling us that it cares for all types of music and things and people, that its approach is determinedly egalitarian and universal.  Or maybe it is telling us, defensively, in advance, and in anticipation of the usual TBP criticism, that it doesn’t much care what we think of the album, that they are going to do what they want, not what we want them to do. I suppose that it is both of these things.  They want us to hear them; they’re not terribly interested in hearing us.  For example, their blog, DO THE MATH, demonstrates their wide interests in things musical and cultural; however, they long since stopped accepting comments from readers on their posts.  It’s a High Modernist conception of the artist as creative and aloof, and perhaps more, creative because they are aloof.   No matter, for in “For All I Care,” they have created an album that challenges and connects.

The big talking point on the new album is the inclusion of vocalist Wendy Lewis, a musical associate from TBP’s Minneapolis days, a former aspiring club singer (which I think figures strongly in her work on this album), and current alt-rocker, on the majority of the tracks.  The album indulges in what TBP do best:  radical re-interpretations of rock and pop songs.  Frankly, I’m not quite sold on TBP’s own work, but I have almost always enjoyed their fusions of rock and jazz, not in the sense of 70s and 80-s era “jazz fusion,” but a new hybrid that creates a type of “art rock song.”  The inclusion of an actual vocalist is a logical extension of these efforts.  

Some of the tracks are particularly strong:  “Lithium,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Long Distance Runaround,” “Barracuda.”   Some don’t work:  “How Deep is Your Love” doesn’t quite escape its bathetic pop origins.  The device (some might say trick) employed in nearly all of these interpretations is to slow the song down, sometimes way down,  and break it into its constituent parts.  Lewis’ approach is equal parts nightclub chanteuse and rocker, Billy Holliday or Sara Vaughn meets Chrissie Hynde or Deborah Harry.  In a way, one might say TBP has engaged in the classic jazz singer with combo paradigm, and given it a new shape and style.

Some of the non-vocal tracks, pieces from Lygeti and Stravinsky, seem intended to demonstrate TBPs’ “artist” creds; if they lead listeners to these Modern Classicists, so much the better, but an album of these tracks– well, don’t go there.

So, is this a rock album?  To some extent, although it doesn’t rock hard enough to satisfy most rock fans.   Is it a jazz album?  In parts, but with most tracks under six and a half minutes, and most in the four minute  or less range, this album is not about improvisation.  Is it something radically new?  Not really, since it draws on well-seasoned, and hardly cutting edge pop-rock compositions,  and, as noted, the jazz singer/combo form.  So what is it?  It reminds me of the name  of the Village Voice music poll, “Pazz and Jop,” because of its contrarian blending of pop and jazz elements.  In the end, it is what TBP probably wants it to be; another idiosyncratic TBP album. 

Oh, yeah, I really liked this one.  Listen and make up your own mind.