Music Review: The Bad Plus, Joined by Wendy Lewis

The Bad Plus, joined by Wendy Lewis – For All I Care – Heads Up HUCD 3148

I suppose one of the best benefits to reviewing CDs is the rare chance to hear something surprising. Even rarer is when you run across something meaningful. “For All I Care,” the latest CD from The Bad Plus manages to be both, surprising and meaningful. It also includes other qualities like smart, accomplished, and maybe even ironic. If you aren’t familiar with this group, The Bad Plus is a standard configuration of the piano jazz trio—piano, bass, and drums. Their usual approach in music is to take standards from other musical genres and reinterpret into a progressive jazz, bordering on the avant-garde, setting. In “For All I Care” they have appropriated pop and rock standards from the 70s and 80s (along with a few 20th Century classical pieces), and they have invited a singer to the endeavor, Wendy Lewis, an indie-rock vocalist from Minneapolis.

All three core musicians are first-rate. Pianist Ethan Iverson plays with inventiveness, fire, and a great sense of rhythm bringing out the innate nature of the piano as a percussion instrument. Reid Anderson, on bass and back-up vocals, coaxes fluid and imaginative lines from his instrument. And as for the drummer, David King, I found myself in an unusual situation. The first time I listened to the recording, about halfway through I thought, “Wasn’t there supposed to be a drummer on this?” So I started the CD again and there he was. King, for the most part, deftly avoids the standard role of most drummers. He doesn’t just keep the beat, he plays music. The performance is so well integrated into what the other musicians are doing, that he sometimes disappears into the music. There are few trios that are this coordinated and complementary to each other. My only criticism of the drums is that occasionally he sometimes sounds as if he’s playing in another room. The sound of the piano and drums were perfectly handled, but the drums tended to sound a bit distant and muffled. Wendy Lewis is a great addition to the mix. More rock than jazz in her approach to the vocals, she brings an earnestness and weight to each song. There’s no pretense here, only honest emotions and straightforward performances. This is also the first time The Bad Plus have used a vocalist for one of their projects. To my ears, this is a superb match and I hope they continue to collaborate.

The choice of material is perhaps the most controversial. You have to understand that these are serious performances delivered with intensity and conviction, but the original tunes weren’t always intended to be the same as we find here. In covering the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your Love,” gone is the light and frothy original, and now we have a deeper exploration of commitment and true love. It’s a wonder that it works at all. The only one that doesn’t work for me is “Barracuda,” the song by Heart (it didn’t deviate far enough from the original, for my taste), but that’s one out of 12 songs. Nearly every other track is a revelation. Before listening to this, I’d have said that some of these songs couldn’t have been improved over the original versions, like “Lithium,” “Comfortably Numb,” and “Long Distance Runaround,” but The Bad Plus and Wendy Lewis do indeed have something new to say and I loved hearing it.

If this recording has a failing, it may be this choice of material. I can’t but think that the source material is treated perhaps more seriously than it deserves. After all, we’re talking about “Barracuda” and a Bee Gees tune. However, this CD serves as an excellent example of the value in reinterpreting other’s work. In our litigious, collector-minded world, we attach too much importance to original works and vintage artifacts—the idea that only the original creators of a work can render the best and most authentic rendition of that work. But we all know from classical music that usually the best performances of a score come from some measure of objectivity or a new perspective and that’s what is happening in this recording. The Bad Plus delivers new versions, or covers, of familiar tunes that sometimes exceed the originals, and in most cases, this is a good thing—a very good thing. Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Star Trek (2009)

To be honest, from the first I heard about this movie I never thought there was any reason to make it. I grew up watching the original Star Trek in the 60s and watched every other series and movie that came afterward. The original cast was fine and I couldn’t see a legitimate reason to redo it. However, I just watched the new movie and I can safely say that I was wrong. J.J. Abrams, the director of this reboot of the original series has made a smart, lightning-paced, thrill-a-second reimagining that successfully updates this franchise for the modern audience. That is to say, there is less reflective, philosophical dialog and character development (less yakking) and tons more action and explosions, which is just what modern audiences seem to want. I know this seems like a criticism, but it really isn’t. It’s just an observation. Truthfully, the last several movies and the last few series were tired and boring. And no matter what you think about this movie, this Star Trek is definitely not boring.

As origin movies go, this one digs in earnestly, going as far as to show us the birth of James Tiberius Kirk and this character’s juvenile delinquent past. Time is also spent on Spock’s troubled youth, enduring and sometimes raging against the calculated insults of his full-blooded Vulcan schoolmates. I’m not sure we needed to see all this, but it does serve a purpose as the movie continues. At least we were spared the sight of Kirk’s conception. But it’s not to say that this movie didn’t stumble. It depends on too many coincidences and at times was lazy in its writing and plotting. However, it does have its strengths.

The best thing this movie had going for it was its cast, and that was the biggest surprise for me. Chris Pine, who I was unfamiliar with, by the end of the movie had become James T. Kirk. While he was more impetuous than Shatner, he was also less smarmy. I liked him a lot—maybe even more than Shatner. Zachary Quinto, who plays the evil Sylar on Heroes, played Spock with an icy demeanor and a barely held-back reservoir of anger and disdain. It was an interesting way to play the internal conflict of his two opposing cultural backgrounds. To me, he was neck and neck with Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, who has a major role in this movie as Spock. Nimoy is the only actor from the original series to be in this movie. Karl Urban really nailed his part as Dr. McCoy. Sometimes it seemed as if he was doing an impersonation of DeForest Kelly, but he played the role with such energy and style that it really worked. Plus, he was just laugh-out-loud funny. Simon Pegg handled the role of Montgomery Scott, the chief engineer of the Enterprise. He wasn’t as laid back as the original Scotty. Instead, he played it as manic and playful with a devilish gleam in his eye. I think I actually preferred his version of this character to the original. He was more fun to watch.

Abrams kept a tight hand on this movie. His direction was perfectly handled and controlled, and even though time travel movies can be confusing, this one was easy to follow. He produced a movie that was funny, exciting, and extremely fast-paced. This was a fun movie to watch and was everything you could want from a summer blockbuster, which I think this one will be. Now that the origins for these characters and this universe are finished, I look forward to seeing what new adventures await this new crew of familiar characters. Star Trek, live long and prosper.

Movie Review: Let the Right One In

I’ve been watching vampire movies for most of my life. Starting with Bela Lugosi’s Dracula on late night creature-feature TV, along with turns by John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr. (not a high point for the Count), and then on to the theater with Christopher Lee, William Marshall (the awesome Blacula!), Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman. There are certainly more vampire movies than those with Dracula in them, though. There’s the underrated, campy, and amusing Fright Night, the grim vampires-as-homicidal-vagrants Near Dark, the droll/grotesque vampires-as-strippers Dawn to Dusk, the funny and entertaining vampires-as-high-school-dropouts The Lost Boys, and now we have another vampire movie to contemplate. No, not the anemic vampire-as-metaphor-for-sex, drugs, & rock n’ roll-abstinence Twilight, but the truly excellent and moving Let the Right One In.

Let the Right One In is a Swedish film from director Tomas Alfredson starring Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli. Oskar is a 12 year old boy who is being bullied and tormented at school. His parents are divorced and neither one pay much attention to him or notice his problems. Eli is a young girl who moves next door to Oskar. They meet one night as Oskar is repeatedly stabbing a tree with a knife, while he’s fantasizing about how he will deal with his tormentors. Of course, it turns out that Eli is a vampire forever stuck at 12 years old. They turn to each other for friendship, companionship, love, and ultimately protection.

This film is completely anchored in the themes and social problems of today. Without mentioning Columbine, this film draws comparisons and similarities between that horrific occurrence and the boy Oskar. It’s about alienation, isolation, and feelings of powerlessness. The story is so solid that you could easily subtract the vampire elements and still have a wonderful and moving story about growing up and coping with life. To be sure, this Swedish film is quite different from most horror movies of today—the gore and violence is seldom directly shown, dialog and characterization are handled as a priority, and special effects (with two notable exceptions involving cats and one extreme sunburn) are practically nonexistent. Though this film is obviously a low-budget project, no expense was spared on imagination and passion. Let the Right One In is filled with characters that are fully realized and I was hooked from the opening credits. The characters and the story continue to haunt me. Not only is this one of the very best vampire movies ever made, but it was one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. If it comes to your city, see it. When it comes out on DVD, rent it or buy it.

New Stuff

Hi there. It's been a while, but I do have a couple of new reviews up on Audiophile Audition. You can read the David Grier (Bluegrass guitarist) review here and the Blue Cranes (Indie Jazz) review here. Both are very fine CDs, though they will appeal to quite different listeners.

Also, I wrote a profile for the latest issue of Mandolin Magazine about the Vancouver luthier Chris Standridge. He's making some of the best sounding mandolins around.

As far as movies go this summer, I'm afraid I have rather different opinions than most of the reviewers out there. Speed Racer, Wanted, and Hancock have all suffered from hostile, negative, or lukewarm reviews, but I rather liked them. Speed Racer is particularly underrated. It's a great little kid's movie, which is not what you'd expect from the Wachowski Brothers, I suppose. Iron Man is probably my favorite blockbuster so far, with Hellboy II: the Golden Army a reasonable second. If you have the opportunity, see Son of Rambow. That's my favorite overall movie so far.

Well, stay cool and take care.

Hermon

What I've been reading lately

I've been a fan of detective/mystery fiction for a long time. I love the classic authors like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and the current writers like Robert Crais and James Lee Burke. So it was a pleasant surprise to come across a "new" author--Chester Himes, an African-American expatriate writer. The thing is, Himes was writing in the 1950s and 60s, so he isn't exactly a new author, but he is to me. And he's great. I read his book, "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1965). It's very urban and African-American centric, successfully capturing the times and the attitudes. The two protagonists are Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, two police detectives that work the Harlem beat. In the book, they are up against con-men, Southern white racists, murder, racial politics, and a missing bale of cotton. There aren't many, if any, hardboiled detectives that can match this pair. Tough as forged steel, deadly as a hair-trigger .45--they are more than a match for all the bad guys they go up against. The characters were vivid, the dialog was colorful, the plotting was tight, and action was unsparingly realistic. After reading this book, it now comes to the top of my list of great detective novels, right up there with "Farewell, My Lovely" and "The Maltese Falcon." It really is that good.

As a side note, "Cotton Comes to Harlem" was made into a film in 1970, starring Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques, and directed by Ossie Davis. It was one of the first so-called blaxpoitation films, and is actually a very entertaining movie. If you can find it, watch it, but also try to find a copy of the book. The book is better.

Haiku 2

Recently I sat in on an open mike ukulele session. Just as a listener, but since I'm learning to play the uke, maybe some day Ill join in. Anyway, here's a haiku I wrote while I was there. The house "band" was playing a funny variation of the classic cowboy song, "Ghost Riders in the Sky." Their version was called "Ghost Chickens in the Sky."


ghost chickens clucking
flea-jumping ukuleles
Hawaiian shirts laugh

The Return of the Bomb-Throwing Anarchists?

There’s one facet of our western history that I’ve never really understood and that’s the bomb-throwing anarchists. Anarchists were around in Europe, England and the US in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. Mostly what I remember of them are seeing old political cartoons that depicted them as bushy-bearded madmen dressed head to toe in black and poised in mid-throw holding a round “bomb” with a burning fuse. What were they so mad about? Why did they throw bombs?

The image of the bomb throwing anarchist was cemented in the public’s eye in 1886 during the Haymarket Riot in Chicago. Labor Unions, socialists, and anarchists had organized a nationwide strike in support of an 8-hour workday. When the police arrived at the rally to disperse the crowds, someone threw dynamite at the policemen. Eight policemen and an unknown number of civilians were killed in the ensuing riot. Prior to this event, anarchist newspapers had been calling for the use of the newly invented dynamite to kill police. The Haymarket Riot made the public’s fears about anarchists a reality.

These anarchists were brought to my mind by the recent burning of a “Street of Dreams” subdivision in Seattle. It’s still way too early to know exactly what happened, but an eco group has claimed responsibility and the government is calling it an act of domestic terrorism. Anyway, an entire brand new deluxe subdivision was burned to the ground. Is it terrorism? A political statement? What were they hoping to accomplish?

I guess that these kinds of actions have been a part of western culture for a long time. The original Luddites were textile workers in England whose jobs were lost by the rise of industrialization. Before industrialization, textile production was literally a cottage industry. People made textiles, cloth, and fabrics in their homes. These displaced workers tried to sabotage the factories and machines that put them out of business. Even those American patriots who caused so much trouble for the British with the Boston Tea Party were making a political statement through violence, property damage, and loss. Both of these groups resorted to violence when other recourses weren’t available to them—much like the anarchists.

So I wonder. Are today’s eco-terrorists just the latest incarnation of this sentiment? When people can no longer stand what is happening around them, is it part of our cultural disposition to destroy the objects that represent the source of our unhappiness? Are the eco-terrorists today’s incarnation of the bomb throwing anarchist? I think they probably are just that.