The Bad Plus: Complex Emotions
When The Bad Plus went as far as they could with their original configuration as a piano trio, founding member Ethan Iverson said his goodbyes after nearly two decades and the remaining musicians, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King, welcomed a new pianist, Orrin Evans, into the fold. That lineup lasted only a few years, but where most bands would have packed it in, Anderson and King instead chose to rebuild from the ground up, switching out the piano altogether and recruiting guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed. The new aggregation debuted in 2022 with a self-titled release that didn’t so much redefine The Bad Plus as shift their focus. Now there’s Complex Emotions, the sophomore effort by the retooled group. Each member of the quartet contributes original material (four Anderson compositions, two by King, one each for Monder and Speed), and the new songs expand on the directions suggested on the previous release while not sacrificing any of the qualities that defined The Bad Plus in the past. That is largely thanks to the rhythm section, one of the most intuitive in contemporary jazz: Anderson and King manage to take care of rhythmic business while simultaneously broadening the overall scope. That’s where Speed and Monder come in: “French Horns,” one of Anderson’s works, chugs along determinedly for a minute or so until Speed and Monder, in successive, insistent solos, elevate the intensity level, never to return to the more manicured starting point. Speed’s own “Cupcakes One,” meanwhile, is a forceful, funky juggernaut, and Monder’s album-closing “Li Po” generously opens much of its real estate to Speed for even more nothing-held-back sax work, saving just enough space for his own gnashing guitar before the final fade.
