Bassist Reid Anderson hits the opening riff alone—an elliptical motif in deep, earthy tones, repeated with pensive syncopation—as the Bad Plus commence their first set on a recent summer evening at the Blue Note in New York City. The solitary foreboding at the front of “Motivations II,” one of Anderson’s compositions on the group’s new self-titled album, “is one of my signature moves,” he admits later, laughing. But the music that follows, as the rest of the band comes in, is unlike anything this former piano-trio institution has played before.
Tenor saxophonist Chris Speed carries the prayer-like melody in long, straight peals like a telegraph message in all dashes, no dots, ringed with the arpeggiated picking and windy reverb of Ben Monder’s electric guitar. Drummer Dave King—Anderson’s friend since junior high school in suburban Minneapolis and his bandmate since they co-founded the Bad Plus in 2000 with pianist Ethan Iverson—presses against the poise with a storm of hissing cymbals and rock-slide snare rolls until Monder jacks up his volume, setting off a progressive-metal torrent of distorted fish-hook soloing. After Speed restores tuneful order, everyone gradually fades out as Anderson has the last word, still playing that sturdy, thoughtful math on his bass.
Welcome to the invigorating contradiction of the Bad Plus, one of the most enduring and acclaimed working bands in jazz, reborn for the second time in four years with an unexpected shift in instrumentation and a firm declaration of creative ownership. In 2021, Anderson and King chose to abandon the group’s original format following the departure that spring of pianist Orrin Evans, to reflect the rhythm section’s argument that, at this point, “the Bad Plus is whatever we say it is,” as King puts it.
