Dream Box is
Pat Metheny's third date for
BMG's
Modern Recordings, a set of nine solo tunes for electric guitar, drawn from a folder on his laptop's hard drive.
Metheny often records new ideas, covers, or standards by playing them once. During 160 days of touring in 2022, he had ample time to survey the folder's contents. He was surprised when the music he had little memory of recording revealed these "moments in time" as an organic whole. Further, all but one original had compositional roots in the method utilized on "Unity Village" on 1976's
Bright Size Life -- an initial harmonic scheme buoyed by a second offering melodic and improvisational sequences. This program contains six original compositions, two standards, and a cover. Longtime fans will find little save for guitar tone in common with earlier solo records such as 1979's
New Chautauqua or 2011's
What's It All About. It does bear aesthetic and emotional relation to 2004's
One Quiet Night, a set of ballads recorded at home solo on an acoustic baritone guitar.
One of
Metheny's aesthetic signatures is an often euphoric character in his composing and playing. While that's absent here, emotion, vulnerability, and poignancy aren't. The sparse chords and melodic line that introduce opener "The Waves Are Not the Ocean" are gently presented to the listener without adornment save for the dictates of its lyric harmony. The spaces between whispered chord voicings carry the listener's heart alongside. "From the Mountains" seemingly underscores that flavor with a slightly darker yet more majestic Latin-tinged melody. "Trust Your Angels" is lilting, tender, and expository in its impressionistic use of the blues, a la mentors
Jim Hall and
Charlie Haden. The first four originals are followed by two elegantly wrought covers. The first is a harmonically and rhythmically re-envisioned reading of
Russell Vernon Longstreth's (aka
Russ Long) obscure yacht rock classic "Never Was Love."
Metheny's version strips away the sheen of pop artifice, revealing the sophisticated nature of its intricate blue melody.
Sammy Cahn's "I Fall in Love Too Easily" is rendered with a similar approach to the one pianist
Bill Evans articulated on 1962's
Moon Beams.
Metheny's gentle use of reverb adds an additional multi-phonic voice as he hovers between single string melody, chord changes, and the mysterious innovative shapes he employs as bridges between. The other standard is
Luiz Bonfa's "Morning of the Carnival" ("Manha de Carnival"). Unlike the many jazz versions out there,
Metheny's realization closely adheres to
Bonfa's save for a subtle meld of samba and cumbia rhythms. When
Metheny states the melody, he offers contrasting melodic voices on top, culminating in a warm, pointed solo. Set closer "Clouds Can't Change the Sky" is another listener-enveloping ballad composed in sections. Its lyric statement is followed first by abstraction in tone, texture, and tempo before establishing a second melody from that investigation, resolving them both. The electric guitar ballads on
Dream Box offer unvarnished introspection, uncanny musical vision, and gorgeous technique. ~ Thom Jurek
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