The Bad Plus
“The Bad Plus isn’t about instruments; it’s about the music,” bassist Reid Anderson tells Apple Music. “The band is whatever we say it is, and this record is a testament to that fact.” Twenty-one years on from their explosive piano trio debut, traversing everything from free jazz to punk, the Minneapolis-formed combo keeps evolving. Following the departure of pianist Orrin Evans in 2021, founding members Anderson and drummer Dave King faced a difficult decision: find a new formation or call it quits. Thankfully, the pair called up powerhouse instrumentalists Chris Speed on tenor sax and Ben Monder on guitar to transform The Bad Plus into a quartet. Their resulting 15th studio record is both a continuation of their angular and unpredictable sound, as well as the start of a new project. From the meditative opening of “Motivations II” to the psychedelic distortions of “Not Even Close To Far Off” and the avant-garde improvisations of “Sick Fire,” The Bad Plus may be in a new era, but they still deliver on the same arresting compositions. “It’s a chance for us to give our music a new context—a rebirth of sorts,” Anderson says. Read on for his in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Motivations II”** “Pre-pandemic, each year or so, we’d plan on making a new record, and then myself and Dave would get to work writing the tunes. For this album, we had more writing time because of the lockdowns, and it ended up being a great opportunity to work out ways of writing more efficiently. ‘Motivations II’ is a great example of that more minimal and efficient style, trying to get a lot out of a small amount of music. It felt like the perfect overture and introduction for the record because it eases you into the rest of the tracks.” **“Sun Wall”** “Dave and I have two distinct styles of writing. He has more of a driving explosiveness in his compositions, and his forms are often quirky and unconventional. ‘Sun Wall’ is a great representation of how our strengths as writers lie in our contrasts. The track features Ben Monder on guitar, and he plays an extraordinary, distorted solo, which is rough around the edges. That sound encapsulates how we’re not trying to make a pristine product—we want friction and tension, as well as ambience.” **“Not Even Close To Far Off”** “We always want to embrace the rock music that we grew up with and that shaped us into wanting to be musicians. We are children of the 1980s, listening to New Wave and driving eighth-note music like Depeche Mode or The Police or Peter Gabriel. This track embraces the power of that, rather than feeling like we have to pay homage to jazz instead. It is also a great vehicle for our saxophonist, Chris Speed, who plays an amazing solo here.” **“You Won’t See Me Before I Come Back”** “This is one of my compositions, and it takes the listener on a journey through a more epic soundscape before reaching a sense of an arrival at the end. A lot of what we do in our music is to embrace different stylistic touchstones, and ‘You Won’t See Me Before I Come Back’ is unabashedly melodic, with a pop sensibility to its arc.” **“Sick Fire”** “Another important ingredient in our music is the avant-garde. ‘Sick Fire’ is free improvisation, and it is a testament to the responsibility of playing free. When you have no structure going into a song, you have a real duty to listen and shape the music to make it into a song. Pop and the avant-garde are the two poles for us, and there is no hierarchy there—they are equally important.” **“Stygian Pools”** “Titles are an important jumping-off point for the listener’s imagination, and they help make each song into its own world. There’s something dark about this track and that is where the title originated from. We usually know what the instrumentation for the band is going to be before writing a record, but this time, some of the music was conceived for the original trio and had to be adapted. ‘Stygian Pools’ is one such composition that popped into my head when I was walking around London one day. I sang it into my phone and then took it to the new band to be worked on.” **“In The Bright Future”** “I wanted to write a song for this record that was just based on a single bass ostinato being played throughout the whole composition. Specific basslines are quite unusual in jazz, but they can be a really effective tool. ‘In The Bright Future’ was a phrase that I kept saying, sometimes ironically, during the pandemic. It’s cynical, since you’re never actually ‘in’ the future, but there is a hopefulness to the music, and I think it carries a message of optimism.” **\"The Dandy”** “Dave conceived this track as the closing kiss goodbye to the record. It has a certain meditative arc to it that feels like a way of sailing off gently into the night and undulating as we fade out. I’m not sure who the character of The Dandy is though—perhaps it’s an homage to the dandy in all of us!”
Twenty-one years after making their landmark debut as a genre exploding piano-bass-drums trio, the always adventurous group have reinvented themselves as a dynamic quartet. “If after more than 20 years you can put out a record that has the energy of a debut album, to me, that’s saying something. It’s what reinventing yourself is all about.” Reid Anderson “We believe we’re making the same statement we did with the piano twenty-one years ago, just with a completely different instrumentation.” Dave King “Evolution is necessary for life and creativity. We’ve evolved, but we’re still The Bad Plus.” say Dave King and Reid Anderson, founding drummer and bassist respectively of the groundbreaking band known then and now as The Bad Plus. This new iteration of The Bad Plus makes its vital eponymous debut The Bad Plus (Edition Records) now, as always, challenging convention by pushing their inimitable approach to jazz in boundary-breaking new directions. Though the components may have changed, what remains is The Bad Plus’s unique musical language and their undeniable drive and intent. Reid Anderson says; “If after more than 20 years you can put out a record that has the energy of a debut album, to me, that’s saying something. It’s what reinventing yourself is all about.” “We believe we’re making the same statement we did with the piano twenty-one years ago,” says Dave King, “just with a completely different instrumentation.” Reid Anderson continues, “To me the music on this record feels as fresh as anything we’ve ever done.” Of course, The Bad Plus have been at this crossroads before, changing their original lineup in 2017 with pianist Orrin Evans taking the seat previously occupied by founding member Ethan Iverson. Two acclaimed albums – including 2019’s inspired Edition Records debut, Activate Infinity – followed, but in 2021 the decision was made to reinvent the ensemble once again. “We purposely walked away from getting another pianist,” King says. “Instead, we went this other way. We found a new sound and a more expansive range.” This is a defining album for The Bad Plus in many ways; in their 21 year journey, in sound and in change of personnel. But the consistent core thread remains. Reid continues, “Dave and I grew up playing in bands and loving bands. We wanted to form a band and make whatever sacrifices were necessary to be in that band. We’re here to make the best music we can collectively and not in service of anyone’s personal ego. But to talk about what The Bad Plus is, it’s the writing and the song, and the perspective of what a song can be as a personal statement. That’s what we’re fighting for; a personal identity and respect for the imagination and the Song.” Rather than simply seeking out a new pianist, Anderson and King took a hard left turn and enlisted a pair of remarkably gifted musicians in Ben Monder – a visionary guitarist known for his work both as leader and as sideman with David Bowie (Black Star), Theo Bleckmann, Guillermo Klein, and Paul Motian, to name but a few – and saxophonist Chris Speed, an award-winning leader/co-leader of myriad modern ensembles and longtime musical running buddy of both King and Anderson. “These are not some young kids we found from a music school,” says King. Notwithstanding the new members’ extraordinary pedigrees, the process of developing this new ‘Bad Plus took hard work and perseverance. A series of intense rehearsals began in the summer of 2021. The quartet pored over new and old compositions by Reid and Dave and emerged with a singular group sound. The results are a thrillingly energetic approach that retains all of the band’s vaunted adventurousness while simultaneously setting them on a new pathway of genre-agonistic musical exploration. Working with engineer Brett Bullion, the band have fully maximised the sonic and dynamic possibilities of the new lineup, showcasing the virtuosity and musicality of Speed and Monder while maintaining their trademark pursuit of relentless invention and excellence. From breakneck avant-garde explosivity (“Sun Wall”) to majestic psychedelia (“In The Bright Future”) to dreamy meditation (“The Dandy”), the new LP blazes with the very same punk attitude that has defined The Bad Plus for over two decades. Invention and evolution have always been key to The Bad Plus’s creative ethos. A jazz group that has never been a jazz band, they have propelled the genre towards a new plane that might not have been discovered without them. Having recontextualized their own chemistry, The Bad Plus not only affirms the band’s continuing relevance and longevity, it burns bright on its own terms as an extraordinarily powerful debut from an all-new creative force to be reckoned with. “We feel like we’ve pulled off a magic trick,” Dave King says, “changing the lineup from a trio to a quartet with guitar and saxophone that still sounds coherent as The Bad Plus. Having two main composers was our greatest card to play. Our language remains, and that’s the magic.”
'The Bad Plus' makes a convincing case for the new lineup and puts the quartet's vitality on full display and injects modern jazz with that same Bad Plus edge.