DREAM BOX

It's been a while since I've heard a Pat Metheny album that was entirely him doing solo guitar. (Orchestration doesn't count.) 1979's New Chatauqua (my first Metheny purchase back in 1980)) may be the only one I can think of (as well as the one album that I know that this album most reminds me of--besides the duets with Charlie Haden), though many of his albums contained solo pieces (as do his concerts), not many contain only him. Whereas the music of Pat's youth was much more diversified in dynamics and temperament, this one seems to be quite contemplative--reminding much more of the solo piano works of the late great BILL EVANS (which also makes this album quite reminiscent of the GREAT tribute album John McLaughlin did of Bill Evans songs on his 1993 album, "Time Remembered"). There are plenty of familiar melodies delivered in little riffs within the perfectly rendered guitar-generated songs. It always amazes me how quiet Pat's playing: both from his fingerboard work and his flatpicking. Also, I realize that none of these songs is rendered through one single track--that Pat often includes layers of support guitars and bass beneath his lead instrument, so I don't want to give the wrong impression with my categorization of this album as works of "solo guitar" play.

A very difficult album to rate (as are the individual songs which, again like John McLaughlin's 1993 "Time Remembered" album, all serve to evoke a flow of one contemplative, retrospective and introspective collection of songs) I find it difficult to now give this gorgeous, nostalgic album from one of the all-time masters of the melodic guitar anything less than five stars. Still, this is not New Age or smooth jazz so much as the privilege of sitting in the same room (space) with one of the great guitar masters. At the same time, there a few standout songs. The pop familiarity ("Spooky" and "Am I the Same Girl " come to mind) of 5. "Never Was Love" (5:57) is unmistakable and completely disarming. 6. "I Dream Too Easily" (5:08) sounds as if it is about to be blessed with a vocal by 1990s DIANA KRALL. 9. "Clouds Can't Change The Sky" (7:15) opens like a Cole Porter song before slowing down and spacing out for one of Pat's deeply emotional solo pieces--one that would have been rendered trebly more beautiful by Jeremy Lubbock's wonderful walls of sound from the London Orchestra or Toots Thielemans' harmonica for the Grammy Award winning 1992 album Secret Story album. And, of course, there is the album's opener, 1. "The Waves Are Not the Ocean" (7:14) whose introspective beauty sets the stage for all that is to follow.

Beauty. Something that is ever appreciated, never expected, always precious and satisfying.

A masterpiece of music but perhaps not necessarily of progressive rock music.