Label: Modern Recordings, 2023
Personnel - Pat Metheny: electric guitar, baritone guitar.
Monumental jazz guitarist Pat Metheny puts out a meditative album of intimate songs played solo on the electric guitar - six originals, two jazz standards and one cover. The material, composed over the course of a few years, was found in a folder of his laptop while on tour - last year he did 160 performances worldwide - and the recording process (a first layer of chords with subsequent melodic parts and improvisation) mostly follows the one presented on the track “Unity Village” from his debut masterpiece Bright Size Life (ECM Records, 1976).
The opening cut, “The Waves Are Not the Ocean”, is a marvel. A hypnotic folksy ballad with a comforting radiant light coming through all pores. Every note sounds important and big, showing a gorgeous folk-jazz lyricism that is transported to the following track, “From the Mountains”. The latter adds more mystery through enigmatic chords and an efficient bass line conduction on the baritone guitar that also assure the serenity of the atmosphere. Expressed with clear and emotional soloing, these first two pieces are demonstrative of Metheny’s incredible musicianship and compositional skills.
Another of his originals, “Trust Your Angel”, is a floater made out of smoothness that can be felt as spiritual or romantic. Yet, it is unable to scale the dizzy heights of “Never Was Love”, a piece by the late jazz pianist Russ Long. Given its urban contemporary feel, the song underscores a deeply felt melody over a tight harmonic work, sounding unmistakably Metheny. He has this unequalled way of grooving that is instantly recognizable.
The slow tunes almost flow into each other, and the guitarist delivers Styne/Cahn’s “I Fall in Love Too Easily” with lounge-style lyricism, and Luiz Bonfá’s “Morning of the Carnival” with an intuitively layered crossover appeal than sounds euphonious and connotative. Never heading to the stratosphere, Metheny centers on his softer musical self. The results are positive.
Favorite Tracks:
01 - The Waves Are Not the Ocean ► 02 - From the Mountains ► 05 - Never Was Love