Pat Metheny's credibility with the jazz community went way up with the release of this package, a superb two-CD collaboration with a quartet of outstanding jazz musicians that dared to be uncompromising at a time when most artists would have merely continued pursuing their electric commercial successes. From the disbanded
Keith Jarrett American quartet came bassist
Charlie Haden and tenor
Dewey Redman -- who alternates with and occasionally plays alongside tenor
Michael Brecker -- and
Jack DeJohnette provides more combustible drumming than
Metheny had ever experienced on record before. Yet
Metheny's off-kilter wandering on solo electric guitar is a comfortable fit for the post-bop rhythmic crosscurrents of this music. Indeed,
Haden and
Metheny are in total sympathy, perhaps celebrating their mutual Missouri roots, and
Metheny's difficult
"Pretty Scattered" -- which he mockingly described as "Guitar Revenge!" -- nearly manages to stump even
Redman and
Brecker. The first of the
"Two Folk Songs" is a great example of the
Metheny folk-jazz fusion, with furious strummed guitar underpinning
Brecker's melodic line and excursions on the outside and
DeJohnette's spectacular drums. Another remarkable track is
"Open," a group improvisation that finds
DeJohnette shaping the track's direction with a pushing solo and
Metheny and the saxes emerging at the end. The two original LPs were organized so that the more distinctive
Metheny fusions were on sides one and four and the overt jazz tracks occupied sides two and three. ~ Richard S. Ginell
