The focus here is on electric guitar, but maybe more to the point; quiet electric guitar. It is an area of particular interest for me. A goal has always been to have a touch on the electric that might get me as close to the kind of phrase-by-phrase dynamics that can occur naturally with an acoustic instrument. In fact, using an electric in this way is quite a bit harder than what occurs naturally with an acoustic. There is one more step between the touch of the player and the listener that has to be accounted for. The new compositions are highlights, tracing their central motifs to unexpected destinations. While some of Metheny’s best original work this century has spoken to his ambition as a composer (2005’s The Way Up), his aim here is for simple but immersive mood-setting. After an introduction of electric guitar against chiming, slightly dissonant acoustic chords, the gorgeous “Ole & Gard” swiftly finds its feet and cycles through various settings to return to a recurring bluesy refrain. “From the Mountains” is more formless but just as memorable, navigating its eight-minute runtime with a dreamy sense of focus: The effect is like watching the sun rise over an unfamiliar city, new contours filling in as the light starts to spread. Dream Box follows the path of Metheny's previous solo baritone guitar recordings, One Quiet Night (Warner Bros, 2003) and What's It All About, (Nonesuch, 2011) but with a fresh twist. The album's title holds multiple meanings, symbolizing the jazz slang for a hollow-body guitar while capturing the dream-like quality of Metheny's musical vision. As he explains in the liner notes, the music in Dream Box exists in an elusive state, often discovered apart from any particular intention, resembling the dream logic that is coherent yet hard to pin down.

And yet surely, I wondered, Metheny has always been interested in the possibilities of technology, it is part of his essence. He agrees: “I am an electric guitarist. My first act was to plug it in. Cords, knobs and wires are all part of the instrument. I happened to be born at a point that traverses all of this stuff, and my fundamental relationship to knobs wires and electricity has expanded along with it.” He said that the true answer to the question of his attitude to technology is that he has no fear, “I’m like: ‘Yeah, bring it on!’ To me they are more tools, just another way to be. It is another way to find a window or a trap door into this ever-expanding house that I have been working on.” 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 withMetheny’s extended history, further such elements, buoyed by a distinct air of spontaneity, surface in “Clouds Can’t Change The Sky,”. In fact, Dream Boxmight 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 ofMetheny’s playing is so sure it ultimately sounds effortless.Dream Box follows 2021’s studio album Road to the Sun and live recording Side-Eye NYC, making it the third release on Metheny’s own record label Modern Records, an imprint of BMG. 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. Metheny has recorded some 50 albums has won 20 Grammy s in 12 different categories. It was while on one of his many tours that the guitarist began rummaging through recordings to compile Dream Box.

Dream Box is Pat Metheny's third date for BMG's Modern Recordings, a set of nine solo tunes for electric guitar, drawn from a folder on his laptop's hard drive. Metheny often records new ideas, covers, or standards by playing them once. During 160 days of touring in 2022, he had ample time to survey the folder's contents. He was surprised when the music he had little memory of recording revealed these "moments in time" as an organic whole. Further, all but one original had compositional roots in the method utilized on "Unity Village" on 1976's Bright Size Life -- an initial harmonic scheme buoyed by a second offering melodic and improvisational sequences. This program contains six original compositions, two standards, and a cover. Longtime fans will find little save for guitar tone in common with earlier solo records such as 1979's New Chautauqua or 2011's What's It All About. It does bear aesthetic and emotional relation to 2004's One Quiet Night, a set of ballads recorded at home solo on an acoustic baritone guitar. But surely Artificial Intelligence also has dangers? He gives a balanced answer: “I know everyone is freaking out about it but for me it is a unique set of possibilities. It will need a lot of decisions on how It gets utilised and the way it gets disseminated.”

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Metheny made one point very clearly in an interview with LJN via Zoom. Whereas he writes a lot of tunes, he always submits them to his own tough test. He needs to be persuaded that the tune is strong and robust enough for him to want to go out on stage and play it at least 150 times. And most of the tunes he writes, he says, don’t pass that personal and self-imposed test. Or as he expresses it: “The batting average for the standard that I hope to aspire to is low.” And hasn’t the pandemic given him an insight into – a taste for – ‘civilian life’ rather than being out on the road? He admits that it has indeed changed his perspective…but only up to a point. Before going on tour these days, there is, he admits, some self-questioning about whether going out to perform in front of “a bunch of strangers” makes any sense, particularly as his 70th birthday approaches, next year. “But by the second night it will be like ‘I was born to do this’. My metabolism switches to this thing I have been doing since I was sixteen.” This past year was a particularly busy travel year for me, with about 160 performances worldwide. In the course of all that travel, I found myself returning to that discovered folder lots of times, genuinely surprised at what I was finding in there. For an artist whose name has become synonymous with sleek, smooth hyper-technicality—your guitar teacher’s favorite guitarist—Metheny remains underrated for his unending drive to experiment and challenge himself. While his feathery style on the fretboard remains as distinctive as his robust and permanently windswept mane, no two of his records involve quite the same approach, whether that means finding new collaborators, new instrumentation, or on releases like Dream Box, new ways to channel his creative process.