Prog

You have to hear the Bad Plus's lush, lovely instrumental approach to Tears for Fears' hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." It's a slowly-evolving meditation on the tune that clearly is in love with its melody and structure. It might be the finest jazz cover of an '80s song since Miles Davis cut Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" back in the day. The other covers, especially their florid take on Rush's "Tom Sawyer," may be likely to get the most attention of anything on the album. But they rely too much on irony, on people's previous perceptions of the music, and do not seem quite as enamored of the original. They're jokes that are funny the first time but not so much the second or third. As with the Bad Plus' previous releases, the group's original compositions are the meat of the album: "Giant" and "Physical Cities" carve out huge walls of sonic space with abandon. This is rockist jazz, a postmodern fusion that relies greatly on tricky time signatures and mashups of seemingly incongruous sound. It's not likely this music will age spectacularly well, but so what? If you're looking for some engaging and conversation-inducing dinner music preceding an evening spent watching Napoleon Dynamite or any Wes Anderson flick, this is just the thing. --Mike McGonigal