4 out of 5

Label: Columbia

Produced by: Tchad Blake, The Bad Plus

Do I own any of Bad Plus’ post-this albums?  Nope.  Am I a big jazz fan?  Nope.  Am I qualified to write this review?

(Before you answer, know that the response is ‘always.’)

Do I really have to answer that?

(…R…remember what we talked about, now.)

UGH So I may not be too informed on the band or the genre, but it turns out I still have ears and the ability to claim the generic ‘I know what I like,’ and thus, yeah, I like what I hear when I put on ‘Suspicious Activity?’  BP made their splash a couple of albums back with a cover of Nirvana’s ‘Teen Spirit’ on ‘These Are the Vistas,’ so it may seem like a rut they’re scraping to continue to include covers like this album’s Vangelis’ theme from ‘Chariots of Fire.’  But if you were to skip to that track – or if, unlike me, you hadn’t brushed off the band as novelty and actually listened to ‘Vistas’ – you’d hear not a cover but a song by ‘Bad Plus’ that has themes that are familiar.  Have no doubt: this is a band.  Pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King have done their time paying their dues and sound like they belong together.  The ‘jazz’ label still applies, but it’s the willingness to go deep in the hole that makes the band so effective at twisting tracks we know into fresh compositions; opener ‘Prehensile Dream’ start with a calm and familiar swirling plunking of keys that swirls with the paced drums, building, heaving for several minutes before all things collide for massive noise in the final stretch of the 8 minute song.  Traditional riffing still exists on ‘Suspicious’ – ‘Let Our Garden Grow’ sounds more like the jazz it’s easy to call jazz – but more often than not the group manages constant surprises with the roundabout way they’ll build to a crescendo (‘Knows the Difference’) or when an oddball beat hits that allows the group to go all-out for the whole track (‘Rhinoceros is my Profession’).  As with their previous albums, ‘Activity’s sequencing attempts to space some emotions about, giving us more playful tracks like ‘Anthem for the Earnest’ or something more contemplative like ‘Lost of Love,’ but overall the disc still struggles with a narrative, and it’s enough of a divide to drop my attention for the whole listen.  The kooky artwork and sense of power that bristles beneath most of the songs matches the raised-eyebrow imagery of the album’s title, but the group most represents a jazz trio – just jamming together, hitting record – when it steps away from this emotion.  This is something I may have to warm to with the genre – perhaps the idea of recording an ‘album’ as opposed to individual songs that just end up getting put together isn’t the norm (feel free to puke all over your Ornette Coleman records in disgust at my short-sightedness) – but since the majority of ‘Suspicious Activity?’ does feel consistent in tone, to my ears a perfect Bad Plus album exists somewhere down the road (a point which could’ve been passed by now since they have ooddles of post-this albums) when the experience holds me from start to finish.