The Bad Plus: It's all in the mix

Jazz and rock boundaries mean little to The Bad Plus, finds Martin Longley

In recent years, there have been two piano trios that have crossed the jazz threshold, captivating a younger audience that is also attuned to rock and dance music. One of these is the Esbjörn Svensson Trio, from Sweden, and the other is The Bad Plus from New York.

Casting an eye around the Glee Club in Birmingham, it's hard to ignore the mixed demographic enjoyed by The Bad Plus. The trio have pulled in a packed-out crowd on the second date of their tour, and they are on peak form.

Straight man Reid Anderson is the fulcrum, his upright bass acting as their music's kinked backbone. To the left, Ethan Iverson is an urbane entertainer at the piano stool, draped in sharp suit, bespectacled, goateed. On the right hand side, Dave King rummages round his tiny drum kit, tattooed and pierced, alternating between rickety repeat-patterns and hardcore improvised deconstruction.

The trio are touring eight months after the release of their second Sony/Columbia album, Give, so they're already well advanced in writing for their next recording session. "We've been working on a lot of new material and playing it on the road for the last few months," says Anderson.

During the show, a lot of this new material is aired. It already sounds absorbed by the trio's improvising grinder. The Bad Plus are so in touch with each other that they already have the freedom to rip asunder their new work, visibly surprising themselves with unexpected twists. They laugh a lot, and the audience can't help joining them. Ethan Iverson chips in: "It still works that each composer writes the piece alone, and brings it in, and then we feed it through the organism. I think that it probably gets easier and easier to see how things might go, with the three characters that are gonna be involved."

"I think it's always been the case that we all write with the band in mind," says Anderson. There was a time where members of The Bad Plus used to release solo albums, or collaborate with other bands. Now the trio dominates.

It's certainly King's only compositional channel. "I don't have any other pianists that I work with regularly," says the drummer. "None that I would ever write for. I'm definitely thinking about the personalities and the instrumentation of this band when I'm writing, as a frustrated pianist myself."

All three Bad Pluses can play the piano, but Iverson is king on the stool. "I actually started on organ," confesses Anderson. "Surf music organ. I used to push all the buttons in at the same time."

"You didn't even have your own axe, man," sneers King.

"That's the level of musical family I came from."

"If you wanna hear a mean programmed foxtrot, man. It's in there from birth. Like when Cuban kids are playing clave from when they're two, it's Reid with the foxtrot..."

Anderson and King went to school together in Minnesota, and were playing in rock bands when they were 14. Iverson grew up in Wisconsin. Now Anderson and Iverson live in New York, while King resides in Minneapolis.

The Bad Plus released their bona fide first album in 2000. While the trio are clearly steeped in jazz history, their idea of standards goes beyond what was accepted as such by preceding generations, and have garnered attention from their choice of cover material. They are open to post-1960s beat music, their tunes propelled by driving rhythms and/or head-banging riffs.

These Are the Vistas from 2002 included Blondie's "Heart of Glass", Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and Aphex Twin's "Flim". This year's Give includes "Velouria" by the Pixies, "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath and "Street Woman" by Ornette Coleman.

Last week, the trio were invited to open for the Pixies in Chicago. Kim Deal told them that she didn't know that jazz guys were into her band. "Well, if there's a rock band that jazz guys should like, they're there for sure," says King.

The latest addition is Queen's "We Are the Champions". Iverson smiles slyly: "It's the latest science experiment. We're growing it out of a Petri dish of a very particular sort. It's grand, cubed."

Later that night, they reveal that the best approach to this epic anthem is to rupture its linear progress, building up to the chorus with tantalising hints of melody, before weighing in with its full enormity.

The gig unfolds as a single 90-minute set, a staggering display of musical invention. Iverson is like an uncaged classical recitalist, ramming out huge blocks of sound which he trims with boogie woogie runs and funky vamps. King combines detailed fiddling around on tiny percussion with mammoth beats.

"Time is very elastic," says Iverson. "No one of us actually has to play in time, most of the time, if we don't want to, so I try to maximise that."

"I don't know about that," King counters. "I most certainly play in time."

Anderson is the mediator: "We believe in very round time. Where things fall rhythmically, there's a lot of give."

'Give' is out now