The Way Up

Some of it may be rather unpalatable (the Derek Bailey collaborations) or almost unlistenable (step forward "Zero Tolerance for Silence") but it is always genuinely played and heartfelt.

And so it was that (thanks to a musicaholic friend of mine who must remain anonymous!) I came into the possession of an advance copy and snuck it in the cd player with several music paper reviews that were very promising but rather vague as to the content, ringing in my ears.

Five plays later and I still can't quite put down my thoughts in a way that would mean much to anyone else. It is a truly magnificent, epic, cinematic soundpiece that moves seamlessly through so many emotions - it is a journey, there is no other way of describing it.

With this album, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays have somehow managed to arrive at a place where many of their previous albums have hinted at, and there are a number of references to earlier works in there in the form of a sound or a brief motif. And it's a great place to be!

It is all compellingly listenable, consumately played, and I just can't wait to see the band perform it live - just imagine the standing ovation after 70 minutes of this amazing .....stuff!

If I have a concern, it is only this: each of the four pieces flow into each other and each piece also develops, ebbs, flows, dives, soars, meanders within itself. As a consequence it is a bit difficult to dip into it to play just a favourite piece/ track as you might with a more "traditional" album. But hey, that's surely a small price to pay when musicians are pushing boundaries, experimenting with the art form, and the result is something/ anything like "The Way Up".

Buy it with (supreme) confidence!

And now, three years later, we have "The Way Up". The change in those intervening three years has been nothing short of revolutionary. The recording is a single 68-minute piece divided into four movements, a move away from the shorter pieces of previous albums and exhibiting scant regard for commercialism or airtime. You won't be hearing this one very much on the radio.

"The Way Up" is impossible to summarise. Yes, it's jazz, first and foremost. Not easy-listening jazz, not dinner jazz, not even a jazz heard on previous PMG recordings, but a type of jazz heard all too rarely these day : ambitious jazz. Music from the front line. Jazz from the edge. But it's not some awful, experimental atonal racket. It's music of sheer beauty.

Led by Metheny, all the musicians (joined on this outing by harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret) play passionately throughout, and there's an astonishing coherence to the way they interact. Metheny, as ever, is the guiding light; Mays' piano and keyboards, on this recording, are more subtle and less to the fore. Rodby's bass is as thunderous and as expressive as ever, while Sanchez drums with a ferocity and power that is truly stunning. He's put power back into the group.

The music itself is dense, complex and so difficult to assimilate on first hearing that you really HAVE to play this CD at least ten times to appreciate it all. It's worth the effort, because what at first seems strange and unfamiliar suddenly grabs hold of you and won't let go. The grand themes which Metheny and Mays are so good at creating are fewer here, but more subtle. The rest is imaginative, powerful, beautifully played improv-based jazz. The music takes us through urban landscapes, on a subway journey through the heart of the city, emerging from darkness into the sunlight of pastoral, tender moments of calm and tranquility.

Of the four movements, none can really be singled out as superior to any other, but Part 3 is perhaps the most interesting and varied musically. But the CD is really more than a sum of its four parts, and you really, really must listen to it on your own, preferably with headphones, and not have it on as background music.

I'd be very surprised if this CD didn't earn the PMG yet another Grammy. I love this CD, and I feel genuinely excited when I press the "Play" button. I haven't felt that way about a CD in a long time. Go buy it.