Pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King are Gen X Midwesterners who took an unlikely career path as jazz musicians. Unlikelier still, they became commercially successful soon after they formalised their connection as The Bad Plus. First came a debut album for Fresh Sound in 2001, with left-field jazz arrangements of ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, not to mention a batch of originals that revealed serious talent and imagination. Yves Beauvais, an A&R man at Columbia, took notice of this little-noticed album and signed the group, resulting in These Are the Vistas, produced by the renowned Tchad Blake. Jazz had seen a major downturn at the major labels, so reactions to the signing ranged from glee to hostility, tinged at times with raw envy. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” reappears on These Are the Vistas. Hearing both versions, one gets a clear sense of what Blake, mainly a rock producer, brought to the table. The sound of Anderson’s bass is huge, rich and round. The classic piano trio elements are somehow still in balance, even if Vistas hits sonically more like a rock record than a jazz one. Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Aphex Twin’s “Flim” also get interesting treatments, which led some to stereotype The Bad Plus as a goofy covers band, despite the bulk of the program being original. Anderson’s tunes are “Big Eater”, “Everywhere You Turn” and “Silence Is the Question”, while King’s are “1972 Bronze Medalist” and “Keep the Bugs Off Your Glass and the Bears Off Your Ass”. Iverson weighs in with “Guilty” and “Boo-Wah”. Not that the group needed vindication, but time has provided it: they’re one of the longest-lived jazz bands of the new millennium, making over a dozen recordings with Iverson, two with pianist Orrin Evans, and still more in a new incarnation with saxophone and guitar.