Pat Metheny "Bright Size Life"

"Bright Size Life", Pat Metheny's first solo album, is an anomaly in the Metheny discography. Rather than inaugurating a new era in his music, it celebrates the end of another. Of the eight superb arrangements that make up the CD, only the gentle ballad "Unity Village" (an overdubbed duet between electric 6- and 12-string guitars) made it to the Pat Metheny Group repetoire. And yet, some 20 years after documenting the music of his first working group, "Bright Size Life" endures as among the finest, freshest trio recordings in the history of jazz. It is the near-telepathic empathy between Metheny and fretless bass guitar innovator Jaco Pastorious that defines the creative tension on "Bright Size Life". With powerhouse drummer Moses providing a fluid cymbal-inflected polyrhythmic underpinning, the yin and yang of these two string players meld into one greater voice. On "Missouri Uncompromised" and "Round Trip/Broadway Blues" their collective interplay at exuberant swing tempos is phenomenal, as Pastorious instinctively rounds out every Metheny phrase with elegant contrapuntal figures. The trio's finest moments occur on the moody, rhapsodic "Midwestern Nights Dream," where Pastorious' gong-like melodies ring out over Metheny's tolling chords like some spectral spirit of lost youth.