Pat Metheny Employs Technique & Instinct On Evocative ‘Dream Box’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Add Pat Metheny’s Dream Box to its predecessors, 2003’s One Quiet Night and What It’s All About from eight years later, as distinguished entries in the increasingly lengthy discography of the guitarist/composer. By the very dint of their nature as solo efforts, these three albums would be among the most memorable of many in the history of the Missouri-born musician/bandleader’s career. That they are all suffused with such elegant melody renders them even more unique.

In line with that single session of recording and the subsequent collection of all cover material, these nine tracks are a distillation of ideas Metheny collected over a period of time. Having serendipitously discovered them on a laptop during his extended period(s) on the road in 2022, a unity appeared among certain selections that compelled further revisits prior to recording. 

In a sequence of events Pat describes so straightforwardly on the single double-sided sheet insert within the CD, the Missouri native played each piece no more than once on an electric guitar and a baritone instrument. Meanwhile, long-time engineer and collaborator Pete Karam recorded, mixed, and mastered the six original pieces and three outside compositions in consultation with a former member of a latter-day Pat Metheny Group, bassist Steve Rodby. 

With such continuity emanating from these varied efforts, it should come as no surprise that the title alone of “From The Mountains” conjures the panoramic beauty of Metheny’s best music (and many album covers). Selections such as “The Waves Are Not The Ocean” radiate a relaxed unhurried quality, one that pervades most of this nearly sixty minutes. 

In fact, Dream Box might become too placid for its own good if it weren’t possible to detect the exertion required for the pinpoint accuracy of the guitarist’s fingering on those respective fretboards. Still, as the palpable tranquility abides during the course of Sammy Kahn’s standard “I Fall In Love Too Easily,” the innate precision of Metheny’s playing is so sure it ultimately sounds effortless. 

With “Trust Your Angels” reminiscent of the faint philosophical undercurrents in recent projects like 2020’s From This Place, a contemplative drama is nevertheless too real on “Ole & Gard.” Along with traces of mysticism in keeping with Metheny’s extended history, further such elements, buoyed by a distinct air of spontaneity, surface in “Clouds Can’t Change The Sky,”.

From a composer so well honed in structure–plus his own inimitable logic–it should probably come as no surprise such tracks, as well as “Trust Your Angels” and Bonfa/Maria’s “Morning of the Carnival,” are complete unto themselves. Nevertheless, it is revelatory that on such cuts–like the rest, ranging from five to eight minutes in duration–Metheny employs his instincts as much as his technique.

The delicate balance of those two elements is nothing less than remarkable on Dream Box. Likewise, the open-ended nature of the harmonics and changes in Russ Long’s “Never Was Love” certainly renders it a gem in and of itself. The same is true for the gentle balladry of “P.C. of Belgium:” the exquisite understatement of those selections distinguishes them as both compositions and recordings. 

In contrast to the introspection and insularity of the aforementioned companion pieces to this LP (as well as the raging cacophony in the contractual fulfillment that is 1994’s Zero Tolerance For Silence), there’s an overriding sense of this newly-formulated compilation as Pat Metheny’s unconscious capture of the essence of people, places and things gleaned from his global jaunts.

Thus, while the cover art of Dream Box inside and out pictures a guitar most prominently, those images are juxtaposed with various others as tangible documents of his fleeting impressions. The evocative music inside those sleeves ultimately renders the observations indelible.