Bad Is Good

There’s something about The Bad Plus that inspires hyperbole. A recent JazzTimes profile trumpeted the band’s Columbia debut, These Are the Vistas, as "one of the most important jazz albums to appear in more than a decade." Esquire suggested that the disc might "single-handedly make jazz relevant again." Other cultural benchmarks, from Rolling Stone to Newsweek to NPR, have sounded similar hosannas. All told, it’s a lot of hoopla for a band that, mere months ago, could safely have been described as obscure. And the strangest thing is this: They really are that good.

The Bad Plus consists of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and percussionist David King, three musicians with common roots in the Midwest. (Iverson hails from Wisconsin; King and Anderson are Minnesotans.) They all shared a stage fleetingly in the early '90s, then went their separate ways for roughly a decade before coalescing as a band. Even then, it was a sporadic venture, owing largely to the fact that King, who co-leads the alt-rock outfit LoveCars and the avant-groove trio Happy Apple, still resides in Minneapolis. The group's self-titled debut in 2001 (on the Spanish indie label Fresh Sound/New Talent) flew under the radar, despite positive press. "A year ago we had never played a gig in New York," Iverson told me last summer, a week or so after the band's electrifying one-night Village Vanguard debut. "It's like we've gone from zero to 60 in no time flat."

Trite as the image may be, it's useful to envision The Bad Plus as an accelerative force. Its currency is progressive movement, not only in the usual sense of rhythm and theme, but also in three-dimensional space -- compositionally, "action painter" Jackson Pollock is a vivid touchstone, as is choreographer Mark Morris, for whom Iverson has served as musical director. At the Vanguard stand last June, The Bad Plus rendered Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Girl from Ipanema" in a manner both pointillist and punctilious, oscillating between campy pronouncements of the iconic melody and a series of asymmetrical variations. Elsewhere in the set they ranged freely through original fare like Anderson's "Silence is the Question," a yearning theme that began as a whisper and gradually frothed into an operatic furor. (If one considers crescendo a kind of acceleration, this could easily be their zero-to-60 theme.) The ostensible contradiction of heart-on-sleeve sincerity and kitschy irony only grew more complicated in light of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" -- performed reverentially, with a straight-faced a cappella interlude in three-part harmony.

Fact is, these musicians recognize no divisions between opposing forces. (This is a band, after all, called The Bad Plus.) Each member of the group has a distinctive instrumental voice and an equally recognizable compositional style: Iverson's angular abstractions, King's locomotive propulsion and Anderson's sweeping cinematic gestures make for strange bedfellows at times. But the frictions they produce are conflict-free, and the combined effect is a kind of distinctly American -- perhaps even distinctly Midwestern -- expanse of texture and mood. It makes perfect sense that the band has been tapped to open a concert in June for Wilco -- another ensemble from Middle America known for blending straightforward lyricism with sly experimentation. (It's no stretch to imagine The Bad Plus interpreting, say, "Heavy Metal Drummer.")

Since recording These Are the Vistas -- which leaned heavily upon the skills of engineer Tchad Blake at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios -- the band's acceleration has reached a kind of terminal velocity. They headlined a full week at the Vanguard this winter, packing the house even during blizzard conditions. They've been on the road much of the time since then, pushing the album and playing the gigs. And on a recent Monday, fresh from an interview with Philly's David Dye (of WXPN's World Café), the musicians gathered backstage at Makor, a spot in Midtown Manhattan where they'd been booked for a one-night stand. "It's been incredibly positive," Anderson said of the marathon pace. Exchanging a glance with King, he added: "Even though we need a break."

When asked, the musicians express a clear-eyed sense of perspective about their sudden success. But they're also forthcoming about what they believe makes The Bad Plus such a communicative force. "There's a unified energy," King contends. "Our souls are very focused on the same point. When people sense the community that's going on, and the unified vision, I think they really get caught up in it, like a tornado of energy. And I think we can play whatever music we want -- as abstract or as Œinside' or whatever -- as long as it's coated in that honesty, and that kind of really fun-loving energy that we have between each other."

Anderson picks up the thought. "It's amazing what energy will do," he says. "In a set we'll play music that is stylistically quite different. Sometimes we'll be playing the most abstract music but people respond to it in the strongest way. It could be because it's a great composition or whatever, but it really is just about energy."

Iverson chimes in: "There was a time in the '60s when really abstract jazz got played in the clubs to its Œcommunity.' All of that's long gone, and that's not our situation either. We sort of have to find a different place to inhabit. That is a place that rock music inhabits much more. And that's one of the things I think is most rock 'n' rollish about the band: We try to inhabit the room with the audience that way."

Moments later the group is putting theory into practice, inhabiting Makor's lounge upstairs. Onstage Iverson describes the opening salvo, "Boowah," as "a piece of myself." If so, it's a puzzle piece, sharp-cornered and irregularly shaped. "Cheney Piñata," a newer Iverson tune, percolates with border intrigue (and, as he warns, "ends in tragedy"). King's "Keep the Bugs Off Your Glass and the Bears Off Your Ass" is a lumbering blues ditty that lives up to its name. And to some scattered twitters, the band covers The Police's "Every Breath You Take" -- faithfully at first, then underscored with some intricately choreographed dissonances that seem to bring the song's stalker intent into view.

The set ends with a shift from Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" to a splashy, odd-metered "Big Eater." Just as suddenly, Anderson's dressing-room words spring to mind: "In this situation, we're fully realized as ourselves. Each of us individually, and as a collective. There are no strains on any of us -- it's just purely what we are."

The Bad Plus’ World Café appearance will air on WXPN 88.5 FM, Thu., May 1, 2 p.m. They play Sat., May 3, 9 and 11 p.m., $12, Chris’ Jazz Café, 1421 Sansom St., 215-568-3131.