The counterpart to the Breton saxophonist’s Kubic’s Monk from 2012, the geometric box-y figure on the cover is a different colour, and that’s the closest these two albums come. By huge contrast what we have here is rather than heritage bebop a take instead on gloomy but enduringly popular English post-punk outfit The Cure’s 1980s output. Pédron fronts a trio (with bassist Thomas Bramerie and drummer Franck Agulhon) plus a few guests.

The Cure material covered is from a spread of albums: ‘A Forest’, the north-African sounding ‘A Reflection’ and ‘In Your House’ from 1980’s Seventeen Seconds (you can hear Thomas de Pourquery’s strangulated vocal towards the end of ‘In Your House’); a rapid-fire take on ‘The Caterpillar’ from 1984’s The Top; segueing from ‘Just Like Heaven’ (on 1987’s Kiss Me Kiss Me) into ‘Close to Me’, as poppy as Pédron allows the style to become anywhere here, a song from 1985’s The Head on the Door (that latter album’s ‘In Between Days’ is also included earlier). The Camus-influenced ‘Killing an Arab’, originally a single, and later included on 1980 compilation album Boys Don’t Cry; ‘Lullaby’ from 1989’s Disintegration; and finally ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ again initially a single ending up on the compilation album that bears its name, are the remaining tracks.

To Pédron and his band’s eternal credit the improvising isn’t thrown out of the window in pursuit of the tunes although ‘Lullaby’, for instance, isn’t exactly a stretch for any of the musicians here. Pédron has a note-bending bluesily Kenny Garrett-like freebop penchant, Bramerie’s bass springy and compulsive while Agulhon’s role is strictly to provide non-snoozy beat at which he more than succeeds.

Definitely an album for jazz (rather than rock) fans in their forties and fifties who grew up with The Cure. Maybe Cure obsessives will seek the album out in the spirit of curiosity. But did any jazz fans in the 1980s actually listen to The Cure then as opposed to now in their mellowing dotage? Answers on a postcard to the guy doing a PhD in Robert Smith-and-advanced-Bauhaus studies, c/o the university of Northampton. So, clever not at all obvious stuff with plenty of gutsy playing, Pédron occasionally letting rip, the songs useful jumping-off material rather than the be-all-and-end-all, which would have been banal. SG

Released on 12 May