Pat Metheny: Speaking of Now

February 20, 2002 by Pat Buzby for jambands.com

More than four years after its last release, the Pat Metheny Group returns with Speaking Of Now. "There aren’t many groups around like this anymore, and there haven’t been for some time," Metheny comments, and he’s quite correct. Few groups explore a broader range of production and composition while maintaining a firm jazz basis, and, at the same time, the record includes the accessible melodies that have made their efforts consistent strong sellers and Grammy winners.

The Group experienced its most dramatic lineup changes in many years when it reconvened in 2001. Metheny’s primary collaborators, keyboardist/co-composer Lyle Mays and bassist/co-producer Steve Rodby, remain on board, but the new Group includes three fresh faces : drummer Antonio Sanchez, percussionist/vocalist Richard Bona (who, although known for his Jaco-reborn fretless bass work with Joe Zawinul and others, was happy to renounce that position in this group), and trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu. To this listener, then, it seemed ironic that the new record seems more relaxed than the PMG’s 90’s studio efforts, which featured mostly familiar personnel, but which sported a number of un-PMG like sounds such as hip-hop beats or distorted guitars.

Metheny, though, sees things differently. "My perspective on things is just bizarre, of course," he admits, before offering his view : "The basic premise of the Group has been more or less continuous from the start, which is to try to have a band that addressed form in a way that we hadn’t seen too much of in small-group jazz. Included in that was the idea of involving this incredible revolution that’s been happening in the world of musical instrument technology. That original idea has manifested itself in different ways over the years, but there’s always been this common thread to it. The question is: what can we do as a band that I’m not really hearing anybody else doing? That usually involves some way of looking at form, or the idea of using different kinds of guitars or, in Lyle’s case, the synths or the Synclavier. But whether you do it on Synclav or piano or guitar is secondary to the notes you end up with on music paper."

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