Brad Mehldau Trio Anything Goes (Warner) Rating: NN
Rating: NN
Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has never been much of a risk-taker, preferring instead to straddle the thin line that divides the progressively minded traditionalists and the conservative modernists. On the disappointing Anything Goes, Mehldau surrenders to his commercial impulses and adopts the clichéd contemporary pop-jazz album formula. This involves pleasantly tossing off a few familiar standards (Get Happy, Nearness Of You, etc) and a boomer fave (Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years), and topping it off with a Radiohead cover (Everything In Its Right Place) just to show he’s down with what the kids are listening to. How very sad.
