These Are the Vistas

These Are the Vistas

Any two things moving with different rhythms will at some point for some time reach a synchronicity. If you've ever ridden a swing next to another person you've seen the effect in practice, when without effort you swing with someone you had been swinging opposite of. But the synchronous rhythm does not last perpetually and soon your swings are disjointed again.

Enter the joy and the frustration and the joy in frustration of post-bop jazzers The Bad Plus. Their compositions soar over jagged and scattered beats until they rise over a particular peak and reveal some perfect, hidden vista. But just as you begin to acquiant yourself with the surroundings maybe even settling in, the music's wings are taking you away to some other secret majesty. That said, their contemporary rock covers have warmed to the populous, giving the listener a thread of familiarity with which to trevail the rocky and glorious heights of The Bad Plus' breed of jazz. These tracks are like Sound Picassos, breaking their sources apart and reforming them so you can hear every angle at once...

But despite the brilliance of these moments, does The Bad Plus risk becoming a novelty act because of them? It's a question the band must be aware of and an awareness that can only heighten the danger. As their repertoire of covers builds, will anyone care to listen to their original compositions? It's true there are a number of pieces that reach places more beautiful than anything in The Bad Plus' explorations of common locales, but for average listeners the trails to get to those places are foreboding.

"Iron Man" is possibly the cover least coy about its inspiration and as a result the least graceful, yet this is what the audience of last week's show at Martyr's demanded to hear. I don't think it was because of a particular contempt for the original compositions - the crowd grooved to all of them - but because, given the choice we'd rather discover an antique pocketwatch in the floor boards than to face hunger and cold as we traverse the Andes to find the clock the world spins by.