After showing off their own composition skills on their last few CDs, locally rooted jazz trio the Bad Plus went hog-wild recording cover songs for their next album, “For All I Care,” due out Feb. 3 in the US and already available in Europe. More surprising, they enlisted Redstart’s Wendy Lewis to sing throughout the disc. Wendy is the aunt of Mike Lewis, who’s the Plus drummer Dave King’s bandmate in Happy Apple (got it?). King and bassist Reid Anderson also sing some backup vocals.

The disc kicks off with a version of Nirvana’s “Lithium” and includes remakes – very remade remakes, as is the Plus’s style – of Pink Floyd’s “Copmfortably Numb,” Wilco’s “Radio Cure,” the Flaming Lips‘ “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” the Bee-Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love,” Roger Miller’s “Lock, Stock & Teardrops” and, from my third least-favorite band of all time (Yes),  ”Long-Distance Runaround” plus some classical and jazz stuff I won’t even pretend knowing. Oh, and to lift a line from Bono, they also steal back a song that Sarah Palin stole from Heart: “Barracuda.” You can undoubtedly get a preview of these tracks when the Plus returns to the Dakota for its usual post-Christmas run, Dec. 26-29.

Without hearing the CD (an admittedly big disclaimer for you), who likes the idea of the Bad Plus doing an all-covers CD and who doesn’t?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Local, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.