Meanderings

home paintings voiceover otakugear journal sounds thoughts sex old/ defunct

Getting my mind around this album has taken time. It's not that it's a challenging listen- well, it was for the first 4 or 5 times listening to it, but even that requires some explanation. After the previous PMG album, the title of which i never can remember, I was so let down that I honestly thought Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, the two men who single handedly changed my understanding of music forever, had finally reached the end of their road. That album was so dreadful, so predictable that to date i've listened to it twice.

The thought of investing my money into this CD nagged at me. I was slightly pleased to see there weren't titles to songs, per se, rather descriptions of movements- Part One, Part Two, etc... I thought perhaps they were trying a new approach, so as I do with my games and many of the CD's I buy, I decided to see what others were saying on the web.

I read one womans account of the many movements and complexities along with interesting instrument arrangements and that she really liked it.

So I took the plunge.

And I may never come up for air again.

Yes, this is Metheny and Mays, but this is Metheny and Mays in a way that's simultaneously more involved, deeper, complex, cacophonic yet tight, meloncholy and beautifully uplifting. While I can't say if it's that overall feeling this CD ilicits that garnered the title The Way Up, I wouldn't be suprised if it were.

The Way Up has this tendency to build itself up to a frenzy, only to disband in an instant. Some of these moments are absolute disarray, some of these moments are a little more subtle. Either way, what happens after each of these climax's is the next movement [that's not to say the next Part, mind you], begins using a common musical phrase that's used throughout the entire CD, but each time is a new approach. Harmonica in one place, trumpet in another and all the while Steve's bass and Lyle's piano keep the background rich and gives the foreground some texture to work against. Sounds overlap in perfect, then in major, then in that traditional Pat Metheny way, chords are built in a way that sound obtuse to the untrained ear, yet as always, he manages to resolve everything with precision, depth and meaning.

One of the things I have to comment on is Part Three. While starting off as a forward moving series of bars with harmonica and Pat's guitar, it transforms itself into something so exceptionally beautiful that to find words to explain it. The funny thing is that when it gets to that point, it's really... well, everything to that point has been built using some fairly familiar techniques to anyone whose familiar with the Pat Metheny Group, but that's not to say it's rehash or cliche'; it's just PMG doing what they do best. But around halfway through the third movement, it happens. It's that common phrase that's used throughout the CD and comes right after yet another crecendo. What makes this moment unique is how everything just falls into place... as if the entire album was made only for the sake of reaching this point. The flugelhorn rises and bursts into a moment of pure ecstacy as Pats guitar takes over for just a few moments afterwards. It's enough to move me to tears. It's enough to so perfectly bitter and sweet and feel that special quality that makes music so powerful. It's a moment of pure emotion and pure ecstacy.

But it's not over yet.

Remember what I said about this project being a series of ups and downs? This CD could have easily ended at the moment I just described and at first, i wished it had stopped there. What happens next is a more subdued movement that reeks of elements that I'd not heard since Waterfalls- a fairly early Pat Metheny/ Lyle Mays project done in the 70's. Ethereal guitar drifts and roams a wasteland of undecipherable noises for a while, then it ends.

And somehow THAT'S the right ending. It's almost as though the entire CD has just been the beginning of a larger movement, or perhaps suggests that the next Parts are up to us. There is no bright, perfect chord stucatto's accentuating the end of this movement, it simply ceases to exist like the dying light from the perfect sunset.

So my overall rating is this CD is proof that PMG is one of the most innovative voices in music today. What these compositions evoke is so incredibly beautiful that it's really tough for me to build a vocabulary around it without sounding too sappy. For what it's worth, my suggestion is to listen to it about 3 times, then get in your car and drive somewhere on an open straight road and soak it in note for note. Either that or just sit in your best comfy chair on a cold rainy night and soak it in. You'll be glad you did.

14 September 2005