Pat Metheny: MoonDial

Pat Metheny was first encountered in this parish in the autumn of 1982, promoting Offramp (ECM), released earlier in the year. He was making a London stopover on the tour which produced the live album Travels (ECM, 1983). Interviewed at Kensington's Royal Garden Hotel, where his well-worn denim stood him out from the generally snooty clientele, he gave off a first impression of a cresting speed freak, his hair wild and with more than plenty to say for himself. At the time, Metheny was some years into a road schedule that looked like it might be as epic as Bob Dylan's never-ending tour, so the idea that he was wired was not unreasonable. However, it was soon apparent that Metheny spoke too much good sense to be speeding, something confirmed by his stamina and quality control in the decades to come. He just had natural energy and caffeine seemed to be his strongest drug of choice. He now has around 55 albums and 20 Grammy nominations to his name.

And he has rung the changes in lineups, trajectories and collaborators—Ornette Coleman, Jim Hall, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Haden, Gary Burton and more—so skillfully that every new Metheny album is still an event. It is a talent he shares with Charles Lloyd, who has been on the road and on record for even longer than Metheny.

Moondial is the third movement, with variations, in a sequence of albums that began with One Quiet Night (Warner Bros., 2003) and continued with What's It All About (Nonesuch, 2011)—a solo recording, with no overdubs, on which Metheny plays only a baritone acoustic guitar (on the 2011 album he did play other guitars on three tracks, but it was mainly a baritone affair). The variations come with the guitar itself, a custom-built nylon-string instrument made by the renowned Linda Manzer. Coupled with a new kind of nylon string made in Argentina, the guitar allows Metheny to use a novel tuning system with a range from bass to soprano, something that he has previously found possible only with steel strings. The program is split half and half between Metheny originals, written on the road in 2023, and covers, the latter including Chick Corea's "You're Everything" (check the YouTube below), Lennon and McCartney's "Here, There And Everywhere," Leonard Bernstein's "Somewhere" and Matt Dennis' "Everything Happens To Me" and "Angel Eyes."

All twelve pieces inhabit adjacent territory and Metheny describes the album as having an overall vibe of "intense contemplation" and being "a dusk-to-sunrise record, hard-core mellow." Lyrical, nuanced and beautiful, as lovely as a flower, it is designed to make ears smile.