Last year, everyone I knew with a ticket stub collection and a cone incense burner started telling me about The Bad Plus and about how much the band's debut, These Are the Vistas, was jazz-rocking their world. Being way more about Mingus than Metheny as I am, I was fairly skeptical, but through a lot of unintentional exposure, I came to appreciate The Bad Plus. As instrumental, improvisational hippie music goes, the Plus certainly has its charms.

The band certainly wasted no time churning out a follow-up to Vistas, the brand-new Give. It's nothing but more of the same, but that's not a complaint; most of the groove-happy Give hits the right notes, and even with no lyrics and a couple aimless passages, it seems to fly by.

Most anybody with even a casual interest in The Bad Plus, however, really only wants to hear about two songs from Give: the band's takes on The Pixies' "Velouria" and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man."

Wacky covers are fine and dandy, but honestly, the pair comprise some of the weaker moments on the record, and since the originals are so good, there's no need for these aimless retreads. I get the joke, guys. You don't have to be funny to impress. Just play.

I can't say I don't wish I were listening to Monk or even Medeski, Martin and Wood when I'm jamming out to The Bad Plus, but I'm still jamming out, and that's what counts.

It's by no means amazing, but I dig it. You probably would, too.

-- Reviewed by Paul Thompson