Tarbaby — provocative name, right? — is a trio with the pianist Orrin Evans, the bassist Eric Revis and the drummer Nasheet Waits. As with Ms. Laubrock’s band, the group identity is a little porous; its new album, “The End of Fear” (Posi-Tone), mixes in guest appearances integral to the music, from the saxophonists Oliver Lake and J. D. Allen and the trumpeter Nicholas Payton. Tarbaby does what it wants, mostly with some kind of basis in swing and the tradition of the rhythm section through the jazz of the 1960s and early 1970s, though Mr. Waits warps rhythms through instinct.
You feel they’re in a continuous tradition — you can hear the learning in their hands — and yet they’re all over the place. This has got to be the only record with cover versions of Fats Waller (“Lonesome Me”), the Bad Brains (“Sailin’ On”) and Paul Motian (“Abacus”). They could go down this road for a long time, balancing repertory and originals by all three core members, and balancing 50 years of approaches to the small band in jazz.