As the Keith Jarrett of his generation, the acme of jazz piano for Generation X-ers just as the savant from Allentown is catnip to the baby boomers, Brad Mehldau's record label is astutely taking ECM's method to heart: release as many records as quickly and as often as possible. So Where Do You Start follows quickly on from Ode as a companion piece apparently, the main difference being it is all covers this time apart from the slightly inconsequential ‘Jam’. One of Brad's great talents lies in reacting to a song, for instance, in the savant-like masterstroke of the intro to ‘My Favourite Things’ you'll find on Live in Marciac. The equivalent here is about four-to-five minutes in to the gothic magnificence of Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Holland’. It's then, for more than three minutes of ever-darkening stunt improvising, that he freely improvises beyond his own gravitational pull. Brad's take on bebop as in ‘Brownie Speaks’ and ‘Airegin’ is better than usual when he does such material live as it does not sound as if he's using the up-tempo scrabblers as filler or interludes, but the heart of the album is on Nick Drake's ‘Time Has Told Me’, even better than the way he does two other songs from Five Leaves Left, ‘River Man’ and ‘Day Is Done’, on earlier albums. A lesser-known Brazilian song ‘Aquelas Coisas Todas’, comes off very well, less so ‘Hey Joe’, which sounds a little bit too adolescent for someone who knows his Goethe from his grunge. ‘Where Do You Start’, though, is pure genius at the end and there is a real tenderness to the earlier ‘Baby Plays Around’, which is a big highlight. I wonder what Elvis Costello thinks of it or for that matter Cait O'Riordan? They may just shrug for all we know but Brad just seems to get better and better on this album, and Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard perfect partners. Mehldau is someone who comes around once in a generation, totally off the scale, and his contribution to jazz, already incalculable, continues to pile up for our enjoyment and, yes, greater edification.