The Bad Plus

Look solely at the instrumentation of The Bad Plus — acoustic piano, upright bass, drums, no vocals — and you’d think they were a jazz trio. While that assumption’s not wrong, it doesn’t do them justice. These quirky Midwesterners have jazz chops and jazz panache, but they apply those traits with the muscle of a rock band. Oh yeah, they play rock songs, too: Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” on These Are the Vistas, the Pixies’ “Velouria” and Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”