October 10, 2021
People's Champ
1xLP
Humber College’s finest dropouts have returned again with their first new release in five years. Despite the half-decade between releases, the intervening period for BADBADNOTGOOD could not be described as quiet. The band has undergone lineup changes with founding keyboardist Matthew Tavares departing to pursue his production career, curated an genre-spanning compilation for the Late Night Tales series and produced for everyone from Daniel Caesar to Kendrick Lamar. All this eclecticism reflects in the music on their fifth album, Talk Memory, which includes collaborations with Brazilian Folk-Jazz legend Arthur Verocai, the experimentalist Laraaji, production wizard Kariem Riggins and fellow modern jazz vanguards Brandee Younger and Terrace Martin. Like their past work, Talk Memory can be broadly categorized as jazz but is too inventive and mutative to cleanly stick to just one genre, capturing precisely what is so great about this band. BADBADNOTGOOD exists outside of jazz while also moving the genre forward in a way few others can.