Pat Metheny ★★★★
MoonDial
BMG. CD/DL/LP
Contemplative originals and standards played on solo baritone guitar.
Pat Metheny still rises at 4.30am each day to play music, and these pieces feel like morning meditations; centred, transporting tunes hatched before the day proper intrudes. Deft originals such as Falcon Love and MoonDial’s title track demonstrate Metheny’s flair for mood-setting/re-setting via choice harmonic components, the effect reminiscent of the kind of subtle gradations in stage-lighting that take time for your brain to clock. It was seeing The Fabs on The Ed Sullivan Show that first galvanised Metheny, so a take on Macca’s ever-malleable Here, There And Everywhere figures, plus there’s a gorgeous version of My Love And I, as composed by David Raskin for the 1954 western Apache. Through it all, Metheny’s sole medium is a guitar built by luthier extraordinaire Linda Manzer. Thanks to his cloistered affair with the instrument, everybody wins.