IN THE staid world of the jazz piano trio, the Bad Plus, newly emerged from the American Midwest, stand out. For one thing, they are louder than everyone else, propelled by the intricately chaotic drumming of David King. For another, they are the only jazz trio to play Abba’s Knowing Me, Knowing You — after the pianist, Ethan Iverson, has solemnly intoned the words of the first verse. The tune travels via jagged improvisation into an explosion of histrionic neo-classical chords. Thus the song is claimed from Alan Partridge for the jazz community.

The Bad Plus also present themselves differently. On the sleeve of their debut Columbia album, These are the Vistas, they stare out blankly, looking like extras from The Usual Suspects. The message is more indie rock than Ronnie Scott’s.

On stage their energy can be fearsome. The visual magnet is King, a drummer whose mix of power and grace recalls Tony Williams. He’s thick-set, shaven-headed and has a manic gleam in the eye as his sticks dance and dart. Stage left, Iverson, similarly shaven but dapper in a sharp suit, rides the storm. Iverson has a penchant for grand classically minded flourishes, and it’s up to Reid Anderson on bass to act as anchor.

Anderson is the group’s most accomplished composer but it is for their versions of pop songs that the Bad Plus got noticed. These often hilarious deconstructions in which tunes are pulled apart and reassembled — but sometimes with bits back to front — pepper the set.

After a few foursquare bars, Every Breath You Take trips over itself, pirouettes in the air and lands in a different key. The tune of I Will Survive is picked out over thrumming bass and fizzing cymbals before a climax as melodramatic as any disco diva’s.

The long-term success of the band will probably depend on their own writing, which is still developing. Their 1972 Bronze Medallist is jaunty but rather slight; Big Eater comes across as essentially a drum solo (albeit a dazzling one) with chords perched atop. But Silence is the Question shows that Anderson can write a heart-stopping melody.

The possibilities for the group could be great. While they borrow rock tunes, they are in no sense a fusion band. Their performance is firmly rooted in jazz thinking. But their natural audience may well be beyond the confines of the jazz ghetto. They close the set with a rousing demolition of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit as the Pizza Express lights flicker in approximation of rock show bedlam.

The grunge-jazz boom? It could happen.