The Bad Plus - It's Hard (2016) [HDTracks]

For longtime fans of genre-bending jazz piano trio the Bad Plus, 2016's It's Hard will feel pleasantly familiar. Once again showcasing the talents of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King, It's Hard finds the Bad Plus reworking a set of well-curated pop covers. In that sense, the album fits nicely next to the group's previous covers albums, all of which helped build their reputation as a maverick, forward-thinking outfit unafraid to recontextualize both modern pop songs and traditional acoustic jazz. Particularly effective here is the trio's languid, impressionistic take on Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over." Played as a slow, yearning ballad, it brings to mind Keith Jarrett's fractured, atmospheric flow. Elsewhere, they imbue Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" with Thelonious Monk-like dissonance, and dive headlong into Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps," transforming the indie rock anthem into a tumbling avant-garde, Broadway musical-esque theme. The one shift this time out is the inclusion of two jazz cover songs in saxophonist Bill McHenry's "Alfombra Magica" and the late Ornette Coleman's "Broken Shadows." While those two choices sound of a piece with the rest of the performances on It's Hard, they stand out for their specific, avant-garde jazz origins and work in contrast to the rest of the more contemporary pop choices. It's as if the Bad Plus are demonstrating their longstanding belief that all good music can be interpreted in a jazz style, whether it's Prince's "The Beautiful Ones," Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," or Kraftwerk's "The Robots," all of which are elegantly tackled here. Ultimately with It's Hard, the Bad Plus continue to make the process of transforming modern pop songs into jazz standards sound both deceptively easy and endlessly enjoyable.