April 2000

From the Inside Out
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By Chris M. Slawecki

Meeting new people and making new friends is nice, but the return of old friends can be pretty nice, too. Recently, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen together released their first album of new Steely Dan material together in twenty years, and guitarist Pat Metheny unveiled his first trio recording in over a decade.

Two Against Nature is as musically strong as any other Steely Dan album and serves as succinct primer to Becker & Fagen’s unique and pungent jazz-funk-rock-pop stew. But if you’ve been around this block a few times already, you’ll recognize most of the lyrical signposts along the way: There’s a warning about a life dissolute in colorful substances. A song about a future wasted, cast in recollections of the glory days back in the old school. A soft rumination about a nebulous feminine beauty, and a houserocker that celebrates a supple party girl. A song about a sleezebag hitting on a younger cousin for some skeeze, a rumination on the true wide open spaces that encircle the California jetset…yeah, sure sounds like a Steely Dan record.

"Jack of Speed" will prove a worthwhile addition to the Dan canon. It presents a great chart where the riffing horns echo Becker’s guitar, which folds back upon the brass section, all culminating in organic and momentous swing. Poked by Chris Potter’s oblique saxophone angles, the staccato rhythm of the title track is something new for this band, who always seemed to prefer sleek and seamless rhythmic glides. "Gaslighting Abbie" sports a wobbly and strangely-tinted horn section like a raspberry beret from an early Zappa/Mothers set. Fagen’s keyboards suggest plenty of Horace Silver and Ray Charles, blending gospel and funk and soul and rock together into a magical ointment that can either soothe or sting. Becker has rarely – if ever – sounded better on guitar, too.

Yet Two Against Nature seems to pay the price of its own success. It’s pop genuinely served up be-bop style, undeniably accomplished and catchy yet acerbic and inscrutable. Making clever references to hip people and events known only to their protagonists, some of these songs just seems too bitter and witty for their own good. "Shame About Me" tells the story of a dead man walking, as the form which stands before you is merely the ghost of one’s formerly cool self lurking in New York City haunts.

But where do you draw the line between self-assessment and self-pity from a title like that? A lyric like "You can’t ask me to access the dreams I don’t have now" ("West of Hollywood") sure seems to hit these guys real close to home. That lyric continues, "Sadly for us, our little talk is over." And let’s face it: If we have to wait twenty years for another Steely Dan record, then Two Against Nature is probably their last.

When Pat Metheny releases a trio set, a career highlight usually results: His first record was a trio set, Bright Size Life with Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses in 1975; the appropriately titled Rejoicing with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins followed in 1985, and four years later Question And Answer teamed Metheny with the wonderfully fluid and sympathetic Dave Holland and Roy Haynes. Metheny never seems burdened by the multiple roles a guitarist faces in such a small ensemble (rhythm section, lead soloist, harmony for other soloists, etc.); instead he sounds liberated and dances freely between these roles.

Trio: 99>00 with Larry Grenadier and Bill Stewart is no exception to this exceptional trio output, and is in a different way a modern bop record too. Track after track, Metheny weaves a blanket of ideas that seems endless and lush with rhythmic, melodic and harmonic vitality and freshness. It’s as if Metheny determined on Trio: 99>00 to present the story of electric guitar from Chet Atkins to Barney Kessel to Larry Coryell – entirely in music, and with nods to giants of post-bop saxophone along the way.

"What Do You Want?" opens by stating the melody once, than a second variation – a standard bop signal for "Let’s jam!" – before Metheny tears off on his own like the roadrunner racing a rollercoaster. Using another tool of the bopper’s trade, he reworks the pop showtune "A Lot of Livin’ To Do" into an alternative approach so beautiful that you wish you could find the original melody so you could sing along!

Metheny’s fluid and melodic style makes him the guitarist compared to saxophone players more than any other, here employed on personalized versions of Wayne Shorter’s "Capricorn" and Coltrane’s "Giant Steps." "‘Capricorn’ is a Wayne Shorter tune that I have always loved but don’t ever recall hearing anyone else play," the guitarist notes. "‘Giant Steps’ is, of course, the John Coltrane composition that I think I have now heard everyone else play."

Trio also features three reflective and tender acoustic guitar ballads, "Just Like The Day," "We Had A Sister," and the closing number, "Travels." Every cascading figure and ripple, each taut lick and gentle caress, suggests volumes of emotion (and, perhaps, that Metheny should consider working regularly with a lyricist for an album of ballads). "Travels" especially resounds with the clear, crisp beautiful sound of daybreak in the American heartland, equal parts country and jazz, that will endure as one of many contributions to the sonic language of modern music made by this talented composer-guitarist.