Artist: THE BAD PLUS Title: IT'S HARD Release Date: 26/08/2016 Produced and Arranged by The bad Plus Recorded at Brooklyn Recording, Brooklyn, NY Mastered at HM Mastering Recording and mixing Engineer: Pete Rende Mastering Engineer: Huntley Miller Executive-Producers: Chuck Mitchell, Darryl Pitt Photography By David King and Darryl Pitt [Flower Photo] Management: Depth of field Design by Greg Meyers Genre: Jazz Length: 44:52 Label: Okeh (88985 33714 2 ) ***TRACKLISTING: 01. Maps (Brian Chase, Karen Lee Orzolek & Nick Zinner) 4:21 02. Games Without Frontiers (Peter Gabriel) 4:20 03. Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper) 6:15 04. I Walk The Line (Johnny Cash) 3:19 05. Alfombra Magica (Bill McHenry) 4:08 06. The Beautiful Ones (Prince) 3:32 07. Don't Dream It's Over (Neil Finn) 5:22 08. Staring At The Sun (Tunde Adebimpe & David Andrew Sitek) 4:27 09. Mandy (Scott English & Richard Kerr) 6:14 10. The Robots (Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos & Ralf Hutter) 3:31 11. Broken Shadows (Ornette Coleman) 3:33 ***Musicians: Double Bass: Reid Anderson Drums: David King Piano: Ethan Iverson ***Review from http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jazz-the-bad-plus-its-hard-jp5x0rxxs: ALBUM REVIEW Jazz: The Bad Plus: It’s Hard Chris Pearson September 2 2016 ★★★★☆ The gnarly acoustic trio the Bad Plus made their name 15 years ago by proving that jazz could take on rock and win. Wittily and wilfully they successfully reworked songs by Nirvana, Tears for Fears and Abba. After seven years playing their own tunes, the pianist Ethan Iverson, the bassist Reid Anderson and the drummer David King have returned to their origins with a crowd-pleasing collection drawing on such artists as Peter Gabriel, Prince, Crowded House, Barry Manilow and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. So it’s an album built on contrasts, but the most tantalising often seems to be not between… ***Review from http://www.popmatters.com/review/the-bad-plus-its-hard/: by John Garratt 11 October 2016 If the lay-listener were to know just one thing about the modern jazz trio the Bad Plus, it’s that they have a knack for choosing covers that are borderline gimmicky. From their first stabs at Blondie, Aphex Twin, and Nirvana to an entire album of covers named after a Nirvana lyric, each new release from these wise-asses had me guessing what they were going to tackle next. Then, somewhere around the turn of the decade, the band decided to focus on original material. This was a good move since, 1) their originals are worth more than just a cursory listen (check out Dave King’s “Anthem for the Earnest” on Suspicious Activity? for a prime example), and 2) all three members could write. So write they did. Never Stop, Made Possible, Inevitable Western, and their collaboration with saxophonist Joshua Redman all focused on original material. Only for a university-commissioned reading of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring did they break from this new trend. When I received my copy of It’s Hard in the mail one day, I honestly thought for a second that the Bad Plus went and covered what was supposed to be the Who’s final album from 1982. That would have been a gas. Alas, it’s just another album of covers—some jazz, some pop, some indie rock, one county number, all through the unmistakable Bad Plus filter. Why the switch back to familiar territory? Drummer Dave King is quoted in the press release as saying, “After several years of focusing largely on original music, we thought it would be creatively challenging to return to arranging music that’s not ours.” This could be code for, “People stopped paying attention to us when we kept recording our own stuff.” It’s Hard makes quite a bid for your attention right off the bat by covering the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first. After “Maps”, the trio walks the timeline back to varying degrees of yesteryear with Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers”, Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, and Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line”. This last golden oldie may sound harmonically sarcastic to anyone unaccustomed to the Bad Plus’s style. Pianist Ethan Iverson’s goofy treatment of the occasional flatted-third will bristle the very same country fans who thought that Ween weren’t being sincere back in the ‘90s. The same goes for the chorus of “Time After Time”; the band’s unison shift in the melodic phrasing sounds like they’re wrestling with Lauper’s inner circus clown—if such a thing exists. The further you make it through It’s Hard, the more it sounds like a braggart who set his or her iPod on shuffle. There’s “Alfombra Mágica” by Bill McHenry, “Broken Shadows” by Ornette Coleman, “The Robots” by Kraftwerk, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House, “The Beautiful Ones” by Prince, and “Mandy” made popular by Barry Manilow. Their second main bid for street cred comes in the form of TV on the Radio’s “Staring at the Sun”. Yet your opinion about these various acts will not be what determines your opinion of It’s Hard overall, it will be your opinion of how entertaining the Bad Plus manage to make it all sound. It’s Hard‘s accompanying press release mentions that the band was slated to give a complete performance of Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction in Chicago in early September. Apart from this delightful piece of news, it’s becoming more and more difficult over time to be surprised by the Bad Plus’s choice of covers. This isn’t to say that the Bad Plus has completely lost the ability to surprise us. Though they remain a vital game piece in the modern jazz chessboard, an album like It’s Hard won’t help them zoom to the other side. It's Hard Rating: 6/10 ***Review from http://www.londonjazznews.com/2016/09/cd-review-bad-plus-its-hard.html: The Bad Plus - It’s Hard (Okeh Records / Sony Music Masterworks 88985 33714 2. CD Review by Liam Izod) In 2016, we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of punk – and if there is a jazz group who might lay claim to the legacy of 1976, it is Brooklyn’s The Bad Plus. Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and Dave King have been purveying jazz-punk deconstructions of zeitgeisty hits from Bowie to Black Sabbath since their formation in 2000. In 2014, they released a reinterpretation of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, demonstrating their respect for the musical iconoclasts of the past, though not quite provoking the riots that famously broke out at the original Rite’s premiere. Rather than riot, the appropriate reaction to a Bad Plus covers album is more a sort of post-modern chortle at their irascible rearrangements. There’s a lot of fun to be had with the eleven selections on their latest, It’s Hard. Kraftwerk’s The Robots gets a sparky latin overhaul, which finds the swing amidst the precise pulses of the original. Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time is another triumph, with Iverson extracting some affecting changes, under which Anderson weaves what seems like an endlessly ascending bass line. There are moments, though, which make you question whether you get the joke. Did the world really need a contemporary jazz cover of an early noughties indie song that wasn’t particularly remarkable the first time round? Are the Bad Plus celebrating these old hits, or sending them up, or both? The final track, Broken Shadows by Ornette Coleman, offers some answers. The trio cover it almost like a ballad in a standards book – and it is the most genuine moment on the album, and their reverence for the avant-jazz great is plain to hear. So, The Bad Plus are perhaps best understood through the prism of Ornette as well as punk. Here, they continue to find playful new ways to improvise in the jazz idiom, and to transmit challenging music to those who might not often hear it. That can only be commended. On Monday, September 19, 2016 ***Review from http://www.allmusic.com/album/its-hard-mw0002962787: AllMusic Review by Matt Collar ★★★★☆ 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.