I’ve had an off and on love affair with The Bad Plus over the years first hearing them when they were unknowns and finding them very fresh back then. But I went off them a lot circa Prog yet returned to some kind of fandom from Made Possible on.

If push were to come to shove I still think EST were more of an emotional band yet perhaps that’s where Joshua Redman comes in: he brings extra emotional content to add to what the trio are doing, convulsing raw musical impulses that probably have been lurking there all along somehow staying partially hidden. It’s not like he’s playing big soppy ballads because he’s not at all at least here. However, there is always that great tenderness in his playing that draws from some deep well to refresh the listener and I think he provided this same additional element when he appeared with Brad Mehldau touring Highway Rider.

I’m reviewing without much background briefing material so can’t provide you with too much geekily smug trivia and expensively finessed agency copywriter metaphors laboriously lifted from the press release so apologies for that. But what’s here is simple enough to contemplate: nine tracks well crafted and contemporary graced with clean sleek quite melodic lines spacious enough for improvisations and band interplay despite the odd oblique interlude.

Opening with ‘As This Moment Slips Away’, the knotty ballad ‘Beauty Has It Hard’ follows, then the scampering ‘County Seat’, Redman’s tune ‘The Mending’, the aforementioned anthem ‘Dirty Blonde’ written by bassist Reid Anderson, and then in one of the more anarchic tunes the free-ish ‘Faith Through Error’, Dave King banging away like a vandal on a vendetta.

‘Lack the Faith But Not The Wine’, another Anderson tune has a very poignant saxophone theme underpinned by Iverson tracking the melody amounting to one of the most moving moments on the album, the mood sustained right to the heartbreaking end. It’s left to ‘Friend or Foe’ and finally the second and last of Redman’s two contributions the intense ‘Silence is the Question’ complete this exquisite album.

Faith as well as friendship and enmity are some of the questioning themes alluded to in the track titles making you think that there is some amount of armchair philosophising going on. And certainly the musical direction lends itself to introspection but nothing enters the deep freeze for too long as there is a directness and vitality to the band interplay at all times.

Some might see this debut not as a quartet but as a trio+ yet I’m inclined more towards the former description as Redman integrates so well in Bad Plus band-think and Ethan Iverson is so adept at laying back when he needs to so refusing to be too overbearing as some trio pianists can be particularly when they enter their dangerous auteur phase.

A stroke of genius to bring these four together, whether they’re in it for the long term or not I’ve no idea. Let’s hope it’s the beginning of a long period together as everything simply slots into place on what must be one of the best jazz albums of the year so far. 

Stephen Graham

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman play Love Supreme on 4 July