The Bad Plus June 3, 2005

Much like piano maestro Brad Mehldau, jazz's The Bad Plus tend to be better known for their covers of famous songs than for their immense talent. But they more than hold their own: they fucking rule.

"[FOUR STARS] On 'Give', their third album, the Bad Plus triumphantly bag truly extreme game... By any standard, jazz or otherwise, it is moving, mighty music?bad in all the right ways."
? Rolling Stone

"...high art, not pop gimmickry...The Bad Plus embrace sonic adventure without selfish avant-gardism...seething with funky new-millennium rhythms and succulent harmonic flights."
?Entertainment Weekly

"The band's most potent weapon lies in original composition...There haven't been this many memorable tunes on a typical modern jazz recording in years."
?The Washington Post

"...the group's increasingly sophisticated writing is what makes this album remarkable. A breath of fresh air? More like a whirlwind."
?The Times (London)

"You don't expect the stately trinity of piano-bass-drums to qualify as any kind of power trio, but that's what happens with this extraordinary unit... This bad band must run and run..."
? BBC Music Magazine

"['These Are The Vistas'] is one of the most important jazz albums to appear in more than a decade."
? JazzTimes

"?what if a jazz band refused to put itself in the genre?s usual ghetto, but branched out to embrace the backbeats of rock and the melodic qualities of pop? And what if they did so in a way that didn?t compromise any of jazz?s improvisational adventure? That?s what the Bad Plus has done. And the result has made this trio?one of the most acclaimed new jazz bands in memory."
? New York Daily News