Bad Plus Plus
THE BAD PLUS
Activate Infinity
Edition
REID ANDERSON/DAVE KING/CRAIG TABORN
Golden Valley Is Now
Intakt
Drummer Dave King and bassist Reid Anderson have had an uproarious last 24 months. They lost their partner of 17 years in the Bad Plus, pianist Ethan Iverson, found a new Bad keyboardist/pal (the joyously diabolical Orrin Evans), and recorded two new albums, including this month’s Activate Infinity. At the same time, Anderson and King renewed their childhood friendship with fellow Minneapolis native and charmed free keyboardist Craig Taborn for a live-without-sequencers tribute to their former Golden Valley stomping grounds.
Call it a tale of one rhythm section, or new chapters in a life-book dedicated to progressive music-making: These recordings present Anderson and King in a rainbow of surprisingly subtle colors and shadings.
Hewing closer to cool postbop tradition than most of the Bad Plus’ previous efforts (including their first album with Evans, the math-rocking Never Stop II), the all-original Activate Infinity finds Evans mashing his own sinister soulfulness into swift Monk-like runs (“Avail”), playful Guaraldi-isms (“Thrift Store Jewelry”) and pastoral Bruce Hornsby-ish themes (“The Red Door”) without losing sight of his unique tone. King, meanwhile, is an absolute monster. Higher in the mix than the fluid Anderson, he rumbles and rumbas with giddy complexity on “Avail,” crafts a wash of crashing cymbals, rolling toms, and quickly flitting snares on “Dovetail Nicely,” and elegantly sand-dances below Evans’ heady modal cocktail on “Love Is the Answer.”
Though it doesn’t lack for quirk, there’s a breezy symmetry and easygoing melodicism to TBP’s new album that’s more handsome than it is histrionic.
Golden Valley Is Now is a different workout for Anderson and King, one where the twosome split songwriting credits and toy with electronic textures or, in Taborn’s case, silvery synth sounds. This time Anderson is loud in the bass bin-rattling mix, especially on his short, sharp, self-penned “City Diamond,” a thumping ’80s New Wave track led by Taborn’s shiny, hypnotic keyboard lines, and his eerily elongated “Song One.” King’s “Sparklers and Snakes” could pass for bell-bonging synth-pop, if it weren’t for that deliciously cosmopolitan Bacharach-y bridge. This theatricality carries into the manic propulsion of “High Waist Drifter” with its rapid-fire cymbal attack, party-ball handclapping, and Taborn’s cheesy garage-band organ.
That same tawdry keyboard sound, however, works against Taborn & Co. at times, making tracks such as “Polar Heroes” sound thin and unfinished, and Golden Valley merely good rather than great. A.D. AMOROSI
JON BATISTE
Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard
Verve
Thirty-three-year-old keyboardist and Louisiana native Jon Batiste has rocketed into public consciousness over the past decade. With a musical education fueled by New Orleans and the Juilliard School, he went from stages and studios to television via the Big Easy-centered HBO series Treme. Since 2015, he’s been musical director for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And his latest recording, Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard, is the counterpart to his summer release Anatomy of Angels: Live at the Village Vanguard.
Both albums were recorded at the New York venue in the fall of 2018, with being as exploratory as is concise. On the latter’s strutting opening track, “Blacck,” Batiste’s infectious piano and scat singing, the rhythmic lock of bassist Phil Kuehn and drummer Joe Saylor, and the frenetic-to-melodic horns of saxophonists Tivon Pennicott and Patrick Bartley and trumpeter Giveton Gelin create a Crescent City party atmosphere. “Prince” features a second-line rhythmic cadence, accentuated by percussionist Louis Cato’s tambourine and the surging horn section, complete with a stirring Bartley alto solo.
