What was the last Pat Metheny album that – hand on heart – you really loved. Not just liked but loved?
Hard question Colombo. But just one more thing, before you answer: why did you love it so much?
Cards on the table – and by the way I do like this album even more than Moon Dial and prefer it to Dream Box and the live Side Eye album issued in 2021 – the answer is a long time ago and the answer is Unity Band with Chris Potter. Metheny rarely records with saxophone and so that was quite a distinctive album at the time. The one before that I really played to death at the time and still regard with great affection was 2007’s Metheny Mehldau, a very different album. I’ll not go any further back (apart from to say Beyond the Missouri Sky, 1997, Secret Story, 1992 and Bright Size Life, 1976 are other personal favourites from the guitarist’s incredible back catalogue).
Why I liked this, then? It’s the qualities of the melodies and the intimacy of the scale. Metheny, now 71, is with keyboardist Chris Frishman (no, me, neither) and drummer Joe Dyson. I like the Wes Montgomery type intimations you get when the heat is on a bit more on ‘Don’t Look Down’. The sound broadens out a bit beyond the core to embrace bass from Jermaine Paul harp from Brandee Younger, percussion from Luis Conte, and a vocal ensemble led by Take 6 gospel jazz icon, Mark Kibble.
‘Make a New World’ is ultra melodic and you get a certain sentimentalism on the album which isn’t off putting at all. ‘Urban and Western’ is more soulful and all the better for it – great cadences in the understated main theme and a bluesy tug to proceedings. ‘SE-O’ harks back more to a Pat Metheny Group sound and once again the PMG’s amazing bassist Steve Rodby is involved in production duties on the album. ‘Our Old Street’ makes me think more of Secret Story.
All together I am not sure if I love this album – I need to play it a whole lot more as it’s just come out and I have only heard it a few times but I really like it. The bar as ever with Metheny, the greatest jazz guitarist alive, is set very high.
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