CD review: Pat Metheny – MoonDial – 2024: Video, CD cover

Legendary American guitarist, composer, improviser and 20-time Grammy winner Pat Metheny announces the release of his newest album, MoonDial, on BMG on July 26.

As on his previous recordings One Quiet Night (2003) and What’s It All About (2011), MoonDial is purely a solo guitar record with no overdubs, recorded on baritone guitar. What sets MoonDial apart from those projects – and from anything Metheny has ever done – is that the album was conceived and recorded, and will be released, in the middle of another tour. This unprecedented situation arose in part because of his enthusiasm for the guitar itself: a custom-built nylon-string instrument made by Linda Manzer, a close collaborator of Metheny’s and one of the world’s premier luthiers.

For the previous albums, Metheny developed a special tuning system that conventional nylon strings are not able to achieve “without breaking or sounding like a banjo,” as Metheny says, and his discovery last fall of a new kind of string made in Argentina that was up to the task opened up the world of possibilities heard on MoonDial.

The album is available now for pre-order on CD, vinyl and digital formats. The title track, “MoonDial,” drops today, March 19. The album will be available to stream here on July 26. Metheny will also continue his Dream Box tour in the U.S. from March 7–April 13, including a stop at New York’s 92NY on April 7. A European Dream Box/MoonDial tour follows, beginning in October 2024.

The choice of repertoire on MoonDial is something like what Metheny recorded on One Quiet Night and What’s It All About: a combination of original tunes inspired by the new instrument and standards for which it is the perfect match. Chick Corea’s “You’re Everything” rubs shoulders with Lennon and McCartney’s “Here, There and Everywhere” and the Matt Dennis standards “Angel Eyes” and “Everything Happens to Me” (combined with Bernstein’s “Somewhere”).

David Raskin’s “My Love and I,” written for the Burt Lancaster western Apache, and the traditional “Londonderry Air” are also covered. Many of Metheny’s originals were written during last fall’s Dream Box tour, as he explored the possibilities of the new setup, but he also revisited his own tune “This Belongs to You,” recorded with his Unity Band in 2012. All the material shares a vibe Metheny calls “intense contemplation,” with the instrument itself taking center stage. The guitarist explains:

“[Last fall’s tour] represented not just the sound and vibe of the Dream Box release, but really was an opportunity for me to look at all the other ways I have released records and done occasional performances in a solo setting across the years. Each one of those solo recordings, and Dream Box as well, are unlike the others. The idea for me is to try to keep coming up with different angles and ways of thinking about music while hopefully keeping a fundamental aesthetic at work in all of it. In other words, to continue the research.

… For the 50+ concerts I just finished, I introduced this new instrument and this new sound. At first it was just one tune. Then two. By the time the tour was over, the new nylon-string baritone guitar could be twenty or twenty-five minutes of the whole concert.” – Pat Metheny

Metheny has already produced a catalogue of 50-plus recordings that have scored 39 Grammy nominations and 20 wins in twelve different categories. Measured in terms of influence, this catalogue is in a class by itself. New Chautauqua from 1979 almost single-handedly defined an era of instrumental steel-stringed Americana that spawned legions of imitators. Zero Tolerance For Silence pushed the boundaries of modern music-making once again, and served as a companion piece to the Grammy-winning disc Secret Story.

The Orchestrion Project – for which Metheny wrote the music and built a series of instruments to be controlled by his guitar, recording the results both in the studio and in a live concert – was so new in conception and execution that even a decade-plus later, it stands apart from any previous ideas of what a solo performer might achieve alone onstage.

Alongside those projects was yet another stream of development. His two back-to-back solo baritone guitar recordings, One Quiet Night and What’s It All About, were both Grammy winners and the stylistic predecessors to MoonDial. Not only do they shine as pure solo guitar recordings, but the entirely new tuning system that they introduced allowed Metheny to create an almost orchestral range, from bass to soprano, that is heard again on MoonDial.

The MoonDial aesthetic is a return to solo performance territory, but simpler: the infectious, “listen to this!” enthusiasm that has been a hallmark of Metheny’s whole career is dedicated here to the excitement of sharing new sounds. As he puts it: “It is a beautiful, rich and kind of infinite-feeling new world for me.”