Pat Metheny’s From This Place is the best of both worlds. The forward-thinking guitarist/composer/bandleader plays a collection of all-new original material with a quartet of recent and regular accompanists, around which interactions arrangers Alan Broadbent and Gil Goldstein contoured orchestration. The result is deeply evocative music because the production is as restrained as the interplay is energetic.
This challenging album commences with its longest and arguably most involved piece. At over thirteen minutes, “America Undefined” alternates a mix of billowing strings and sound effects with the kinetic action of Metheny, bassist Linda May Han Oh, pianist Gwylim Simcock and drummer Antonio Sanchez. The contrast in the two approaches highlights how spaces are left open as much as how the spaces are filled. So, on “You Are,” the sumptuous instrumentation not only brings out the glow in Pat’s guitar lines, it spotlights the clarity of Simcock’s piano notes.
The rhythm section here is as important as those melody instrumentalists. Whenever Oh steps forward, as on “Same River,” she displays an intuitive sense that enhances the suspenseful quality of the lavish sonics around her. As is his wont, Antonio Sanchez defers to his bandmates even as he authoritatively projects his own personality: his presence throughout is virtually subliminal, yet unmistakable. And through his prodigious technique, he shares a buoyancy with his bandmates’ playing, imbuing a spontaneity to tracks like “Pathmaker” that precludes any sense the core group is playing too carefully for its own good.
The remaining nine cuts are scaled-down versions of the opener. As such, the shorter run times, roughly within the six to nine-minute range, represent microcosms of the grand theme that, in turn, illustrates the overall concept of the album from varying perspectives. The four-minute forty-second title song is something of an exception, but a notable one nonetheless because it’s here Pat Metheny most clearly evinces a healthy ego that allows Meshell Ndegeocello’s voice to take precedence.
As the woman’s vocals spans the stereo spectrum, its breezy air signals the homestretch of this seamless record, thereby reaffirming of the logic in this LP’s track sequencing. Unfortunately—and perhaps not coincidentally given its title–“Love May Take Awhile” is the only place here where the production goes a bit awry: Joel McNeely’s conducting of the Hollywood Studio Symphony comes across soporific, not cinematic. From This Place otherwise highlights Metheny’s gift for melody, a virtue arising directly from the kind of mellifluous guitar so prominent on “Wide and Far.” Meanwhile, that tuneful quality stands out in even clearer relief through the familiar but nonetheless welcome strains of acoustic guitar mixed with Luis Conte’s percussion on “Everything Explained,”
The gaiety of tone in Gregoire Maret’s lilting harmonica there also reinforces that impression, even as it belies the ominous cover graphic of this album. But the dark clouds in that shadowy panorama also recall As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, a similarly ambitious album Pat formulated back in 1981 in tandem with his long-time collaborator, the recently-deceased keyboardist/composer Lyle Mays. As a result, From This Place, in both title and content, becomes a worthy homage to all manner of fruitful creative partnerships.
