Brad Mehldau: Places (Warner Bros. 9 47693-2).

Brad Mehldau: Places (Warner Bros. 9 47693-2)

Brad Mehldau once again tries to come across in his liner notes as something of an intellectual force, and in the liner photo taken with his trio, as something of a bad boy. If nothing else, he seems to have learned not to try to make a complete solo piano recording (his first such effort, Elegiac Music, was tedious in the extreme), so he has brought the rest of his trio (Larry Grenadier on bass and Jorge Rossy on drums) along for the ride on several cuts, with the trio looking something like Devo on the front cover (Q: Are we not men? A: No, we are trio!) and slacker adolescents in the liner photo. But these guys can play, and play they do on this CD. Note that the album title mentions Mehldau, not the Brad Mehldau Trio; the overall feeling is that Mehldau wanted to make a solo album, something of a Big Statement, but this time around he realized that he would be better off to get some support from his bathroom buddies, at least on some of the cuts. Wise move.

The end result is a fascinating recording. All the music is by Mehldau, and all of it is fairly intense and introspective. This is indeed serious music that deserves serious listening. If you just put it on as background music, you may be quite disappointed. The music progresses in an almost dreamlike way, with Mehldau at the center, the rest of his trio occasionally joining in for a cut or two, but then dropping back out. This is music that might seem a bit forbidding at first, but the more you play it, the more you will want to go back to it and play it again. This is a fascinating CD, the best yet from this still-young pianist and his talented cohort. - KWN