Bad Plus: Complex Emotions (LP)

The Bad Plus took a bold step forward with "Complex Emotions", their second album released as a quartet. After 21 years of redefining their sound, founding members Reid Anderson and Dave King expanded the group to include guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed. This new line-up has opened up new creative possibilities, which are fully exploited on "Complex Emotions". The album's title, derived from a phrase long used by Anderson and King, reflects the wide-ranging musical explorations that have defined the band's journey. With the choice of this title, The Bad Plus signal that the newly formed group has discovered new depths of their creative potential. With the release of their vibrant self-titled album 2022, The Bad Plus reinvented themselves in ways no one could have predicted. Founding members Reid Anderson (bass) and Dave King (drums) brought in guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed to create a new incarnation that offers limitless possibilities. On ""Complex Emotions"", the second album of the new line-up, The Bad Plus exploits these possibilities to the full. The title comes from a phrase Anderson and King have used since the band's early days - a leitmotif that describes the wide range of territory they have always explored. Just as the title of its predecessor, "The Bad Plus", was a statement of continuity in the midst of change, the title of the new album declares that the newly formed group has found ways to go deeper and venture further. "With the new album and the new music, we're making a statement that this version of the band has really found itself," Anderson explains. Paradoxically, "Complex Emotions" breaks new ground and often sounds radically different from anything The Bad Plus have done before, while retaining the band's vital and distinctive identity. This is due to all four members' instinctive attraction to the form of the songs, the captivating immediacy of their collective improvisations and, yes, their willingness to explore the full range of emotional complexity. "A big part of the sound of this band," Anderson continues, "is the willingness to explore complex emotions. It's something we're not only comfortable with, but something we've internalized from the beginning of the band." Over the course of their development, the band has continued to find new ways to maintain and expand these elements in their own music. One of the surprises on ""Complex Emotions"" is the subtle addition of synthesizers by both Anderson and King, allowing them to enhance the "ambient tapestries" woven by Monder's guitar. "We have a Duchampian relationship with music," says King, quoting the famous Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp. "You get to a point where you love the thing so much that you're able to look at it through a prism. You can see every single side: the beauty and the depth, the absurdity and the madness, the masculinity and the gentleness. We're interested in conveying all these things over the course of an evening or a record." The addition of Speed and Monder was just the latest in a series of unexpected changes. Both came with storied pedigrees of their own: Speed rose to prominence in the influential quartet Human Feel (with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Andrew D'Angelo and Jim Black), followed by memberships in Tim Berne's Bloodcount and John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet alongside his own genre-resistant bands, including Pachora, yeah NO, The Clarinets and Endangered Blood. He and Berne had previously teamed up with Anderson and King in Broken Shadows, a quartet dedicated to the music of Ornette Coleman and Julius Hemphill, while King has been a member of Speed's trio for more than a decade. That the band can tread so much uncharted territory on ""Complex Emotions"" and still sound like The Bad Plus is a testament to their finely crafted identity and their persistence to constantly evolve.