Best known as one third of hipper-than-thou piano trio the

Bad Plus

, Minnesota drummer

Dave King

can be hard to pin down. With the Bads, he’s all nods and winks, deconstructing the classic trio format with precision and irony, but then he goes and records this old school piano trio album, straight out of Bill Evans and Paul Bley, tenderly unpacking chestnuts like

So in Love

and

This Nearly Was Mine

in the company of fellow midwesterners, pianist

Bill Carrothers

and bassist

Billy Petersen

. In fairness, it is the marvellously original and perennially underrated Carrothers – familiar to Irish audiences as one third of drummer Kevin Brady’s trio – who shoulders most of the creative burden here, but King’s loose-limbed playing reveals a complex musician with the courage to be sincere.

daveking.net