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With the release of their vibrant 2022 self-titled album, The Bad Plus reinvented itself in a way that no one could have predicted. After 21 years spent redefining the parameters of the piano-bass-drums trio, the ever adventurous group metamorphosed into a boundary-defying quartet. Founding members Reid Anderson (bass) and Dave King (drums) enlisted guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed to conjure a new incarnation that offers boundless possibilities.

The Bad Plus takes full advantage of that expansive palette on Complex Emotions, the second release by the new line-up. The title comes from a phrase that Anderson and King have used since the early days of the band – a mission statement to describe the wide range of territory they’ve always explored. Just as calling its predecessor The Bad Plus made a statement about continuity in the midst of change, finally branding an album with this long-held mantra declares that the reconfigured group has discovered ways to delve deeper and venture further.

“With this new album and this new batch of music, we're planting a flag to say that this version of the band has really come into its own,” Anderson explains. 

Somewhat paradoxically, Complex Emotions strikes out in stunning new directions, often sounding radically different than anything The Bad Plus has done before, while at the same time maintaining the band’s vital and unmistakable identity. Credit that to all four members’ instinctual attraction to song form, the compelling immediacy of their collective improvisations, and, yes, their willingness to drill down into the full gamut of emotional complexity.

“A big part of what the sound of this band is,” Anderson continues, “is the willingness to explore complex emotions. That's something that we're not only comfortable with but that we've embraced from the beginning of the band.” 

To illustrate his bandmate’s point, King refers to their early albums, when the trio’s indelible compositions would co-exist with an unconventional array of covers from outside of the strictly-policed jazz bubble: everything from Ornette Coleman to Black Sabbath to Aphex Twin, Cole Porter to the Pixies to Nirvana. Their eclecticism was often misinterpreted as snark, when in actuality it was a means to reach for expression unachievable through other avenues – something very much in keeping with the dauntlessness of the true jazz tradition.

As the band has evolved they’ve continually found new ways to maintain and expand those elements through their own original music; among the surprises on Complex Emotions is the subtle addition of synths by both Anderson and King, allowing them to enhance the “ambient tapestries” woven by Monder’s guitar.

“We have a Duchampian relationship to the music,” King says, citing the infamous Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp. “You get to the point where you love the thing so much that you're able to look at it prismatically. You can see every single side: the beauty and depth, the absurdity and the insanity, the masculinity and the gentleness. We're interested in conveying all of those things throughout the course of an evening or a record.”

Zoom out a little further and it's clear that The Bad Plus has also curated those broad-spectrum elements over the course of a consistently unpredictable career. Reinvention was baked into the band’s DNA even throughout the 17 years that they spent as a trio with founding pianist Ethan Iverson, which included collaborations with vocalist Wendy Lewis and saxophonist Joshua Redman and a breathtaking interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” In 2017 the band underwent its first transformation when pianist Orrin Evans joined for a pair of critically acclaimed albums.

The addition of Speed and Monder was simply the latest in a history of unexpected moves. Both arrived with storied pedigrees of their own: Speed came to prominence in the influential quartet Human Feel (with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Andrew D’Angelo and Jim Black) followed by memberships in Tim Berne’s Bloodcount and John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet alongside his own genre-resistant bands, including Pachora, yeah NO, The Clarinets, and Endangered Blood. He and Berne had previously joined Anderson and King in Broken Shadows, a quartet dedicated to the music of Ornette Coleman and Julius Hemphill, while King has been a member of Speed’s trio for more than a decade.

Monder has long been revered as a visionary guitarist whose uncategorizable sound ranges from graceful lyricism to mind-expanding ambiance to explosive shredding. He was enlisted by David Bowie for the rock icon’s stellar final album, Blackstar, and has enjoyed notable collaborations with Theo Bleckmann, Paul Motian, Guillermo Klein, Donny McCaslin, and the Maria Schneider Orchestra.

Complex Emotions melds these four powerful visions in remarkable ways. The album opens with Anderson’s atmospheric “Grid/Ocean,” which unfurls gently until the tension-inducing squall of Monder’s heady guitar, at which point the music swells to a cathartic climax. The bassist also contributed the rollicking “French Horns,” its ferocious melody seeming to ping-pong from one corner of the room to another; “Carrier” with its stuttering rhythms and airy lyricism; and the blistering “Deep Water Sharks,” a showcase for Speed’s serrated blowing.

King’s “Casa Ben” contrasts cascading lines over a steadfast groove, while “Tyrone’s Flamingo” summons evocative mystery well beyond its delightfully enigmatic title. The new guys also make their debuts as composers for the Bad Plus book: Speed’s “Cupcake One” is built on the rock-solid foundation of Anderson’s robust, elastic bassline, while Monder’s mesmerizing “Li Po” ends the album with an excursion into the stark and evanescent.

That the band can veer into so much unexplored terrain yet still emerge sounding like The Bad Plus on Complex Emotions is a testament to their finely crafted identity and insistence on constantly evolving. 

“The song is number one,” King says. “Our dedication to that allows us to get into the complex emotion zone.”

“It’s an emergent property of our band ethos,” Anderson adds. “We create a space where everybody gets to be themselves.”