Album of the Week: Pat Metheny

While the ECM label announces the release in early August of a sumptuous facsimile vinyl reissue of his very first leader album, Bright Size Life, recorded in 1975 with Jaco Pastorius on electric bass and Bob Moses on drums, guitarist Pat Metheny celebrates his 70th birthday in a much more minimalist, introspective and contemplative vein with MoonDial, a new solo album that magically crystallizes the quintessence of his poetics.

In a 50-year career as dazzling as it is demanding, Pat Metheny has established himself as one of the leading jazz guitar innovators of the modern era, with a host of prestigious collaborations (Gary Burton, Michael Brecker, Joni Mitchell, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Haden, Brad Mehldau...). At the same time, he has built up a highly original musical universe through a multitude of musical avenues covering a wide spectrum of stylistic registers. From the melodic, lyrical jazz “fusion” of the various avatars of the Pat Metheny Group, to the avant-garde experimentation of the radical Song X with its aesthetic links to the harmolody of the brilliant Ornette Coleman, it is perhaps his series of solo albums, inaugurated in 1979 with New Chautauqua, which, like a red thread in this luxuriant weave, gives the whole its direction and secret coherence.

Released just over a year ago, Dream Box revived this intimate approach with a compilation of home recordings, made alone on the road during his tours and found in the depths of a hard drive. Using re-recording techniques, Metheny explored all the melodic dimensions of his compositions, most of which he had written himself, from a previously recorded harmonic framework.

Recorded in the studio in a more traditional way and without the use of overdubs, MoonDial is more in line with the sonic world of Pat Metheny that, via What’s It All About (Nonesuch, 2011), goes all the way back to One Quiet Night (Warner Bros., 2003), offering a succession of inspired interpretations of themes on baritone acoustic guitar, displaying all of the nuances of a single tone that is, all at once, elegiac, lyrical and contemplative. Half were original compositions written on the road in 2023, and half were covers chosen for their harmonic richness, ranging from Chick Corea’s You’re Everything, to Lennon and McCartney’s Here, There and Everywhere, Matt Dennis’ Everything Happens to Me and Angel Eyes, and Leonard Bernstein’s Somewhere.

For the occasion, Pat experimented with a brand-new instrument, custom-built by his long-time collaborator Linda Manzer (one of the world’s most famous and talented luthiers), as well as a novel tuning system made possible by the discovery of a new type of nylon strings manufactured in Argentina. On MoonDials, Pat Metheny, in a lower register than that usually offered by a conventional guitar, explores the purely vocal dimension of his playing, exploring the contrast between the hazy, woolly colours of the guitar’s sound and the legendary clarity of his loose, admirably architected style.

Pat is careful never to lose sight of the melodic aspect of the songs he tackles. Considering this repertoire, which is all cohesive in its melancholy moods and willingly twilight tones, all at once, with a thousand nuances, Pat Metheny makes this album a deeply lyrical diary, leaving the listener soothed and subtly disenchanted.