Pat Metheny - From This Place

The Guardian 80

(Nonesuch)
Metheny’s superb band crack through his postbop experiments, unrehearsed, and the addition of orchestral arrangements broadens the appeal

For decades as a bestselling jazz fusion superstar with a songwriter’s imagination, guitarist Pat Metheny has negotiated the slippery ground between postbop, smooth jazz and edgy experiments that have partnered him with mavericks from John Zorn to the late Ornette Coleman. His first album of all-new material in five years finds Metheny’s wide-horizons composing vision back at its lyrical best, with the sentimental beckoning of his romantic leanings firmly buttoned. The sound of the Grammy-showered Pat Metheny Group of the 1980s and 90s is engagingly audible sometimes, but the engine of this set is the superb jazz playing of Metheny’s current live band, featuring Birdman-score drummer Antonio Sanchez, double bassist Linda May Han Oh, and UK pianist Gwilym Simcock.