Pat Metheny: Bright Size Life

Reissued as part of ECM's 180gm-vinyl audiophile Luminessence series, Bright Size Life was originally released in 1976 and features Pat Metheny leading his then regular touring trio completed by bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses. It is a lively and lovely album and rediscovering it should be a delightful experience for anyone who has perhaps left it on the shelf for a few years, particularly delightful given the latest edition's sonic splendor.

Metheny himself has long held Bright Size Life among his favorites. In 2004, he made the title track the opener on his compilation Selected Recordings, part of ECM's :rarum artist-selects series. True, Bright Size Life had been his debut album for the label, but nobody forced him to feature it and he had others to choose from.

By the time Metheny, Pastorius and Moses recorded Bright Size Life in 1975 they had been gigging around the US East Coast for around two years. The trio was tight. In his liner notes for the :rarum compilation, Metheny says "I always wished I had played better on that day we recorded, but somehow I think we did capture something about where we were and what we were aspiring to become." In an interview for the Library of Congress in 2021, he said "I wanted to make a record that might be the only record I would ever make. I hoped to make a statement on things that were important to me in terms of melody, harmony, trio playing, and even kind of life in general." The eight-track album includes seven Metheny originals and one Ornette Coleman cover, the closing "Round Trip/Broadway Blues." Recorded evidence of Metheny's ongoing fascination with Coleman and his music begins here.

The album blurs the borders between straight-ahead jazz, fusion and what became known as Americana and, though Metheny has always rung the changes and avoided codification, it became an elastic template for his subsequent work. It is also a fine example of Pastorius' playing before he became the guy who turned Weather Report into a posturing stadium act. Check the YouTube below.

P.S. The :rarum album—as fine an introduction to Metheny's early work as could be wished for—closes with another beautiful trio track, Horace Silver's "Lonely Woman" from Rejoicing (ECM, 1984) with bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins. (Rejoicing's tracks include three Coleman tunes.)