The Bad Plus

This became one of the least likely chart hits last year when the band's instrumental versions of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Heart of Glass" received heavy college rock and jazz radio airplay. Now, the modern jazz piano trio is back and their heavy take on Sabbath's "Iron Man" should win them even more fans.

By jazz-purist standards, the Bad Plus are piano-trio gangstas, playing heretical covers of
Abba, Blondie and Nirvana with titanic perversity. But pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid
Anderson and drummer Dave King are quite serious about their sedition. They never
merely jam on those songs; they build new, tightly scripted rapture from pieces of the
original tunes and rhythms. On Give, their third album, the Bad Plus triumphantly... More >