The Bad Plus, For All I Care

Although the jazz trio Bad Plus have gained widespread attention for their inventive-yet-sincere treatments of rock and pop songs, their recordings have made plain that they have no interest in cheap novelty. And while the band — pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer David King — all come from a jazz background, what makes this group crackle is their nonchalant disregard for stylistic hierarchy. They dig into a Blondie tune like "Heart of Glass" with as much gusto and adventurousness as they do an Ornette Coleman classic.

Past albums have mixed such radically revamped covers with sturdy, episodic original compositions, and while bracing improvisation has always been an important part of the mix, the real pleasure has been experience how the Bad Plus operate as an ensemble, with arrangements that see all three musicians trading functions, shifting gears, and assembling the compositions into meticulously calibrated sections, while leaving plenty of space for spontaneity. The core of this approach remains intact on the group's excellent new album For All I Care, but they've made a couple of significant changes; they didn't write any of the material and veteran Minneapolis alt-rock singer Wendy Lewis joins the group on most of the tracks (the first time they've recorded with an outsider).

Lewis succeeds because she sings the melodies straight, without the affectations of a jazz singer; she doesn't scat and she doesn't spice up the phrasing in tunes like Nirvana's "Lithium" or Heart's "Barracuda." Her succinct, quietly soulful delivery reveals a deep respect and appreciation for those melodies and while the band has forged some dynamic arrangements — reharmonizing certain bits, shifting rhythmic accents, displacing simple figures with more tangled and frenetic ones — the rock covers opt for subtle variations instead of massive overhauls. Anderson and King contribute some nice harmony singing on tunes like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and Flaming Lips '"Feeling Yourself Disintegrate," and while the focus on vocals leaves less room for extended instrumental improvisation, the band is rarely static behind Lewis; every cycle through verse and chorus brings some new alteration.

Lewis sits out on a handful of pieces by modern classical composers like Igor Stravinsky, Milton Babbitt and Gyorgy Ligeti, and it's on these pieces where the Bad Plus unleash their most rigorous reinventions and interactions. But it's the pop songs that dominate here, and while I don't think this collaboration with Lewis ultimately changes what the trio is all about, it could be seen as their "pop record." If only more pop records were packed with this many ideas.