Pat Metheny Unity Group
Kin (←→)
Nonesuch ****
Extending the Unity Band can’t have been easy. The addition of Italian-born multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi, a new star nothing if not versatile, credited as playing 11 instruments as well as adding vocals and, um, whistling, has gradually nudged Metheny into the completion of a saxophone-flavoured group that seems larger than it is. And it’s much different to the much missed Pat Metheny Group last heard on 2005’s The Way Up. Whether this “Unity Band plus-1” (very unPMG-like in nearly every respect although long-time PMG bassist Steve Rodby is associate producer as he was on 2012’s Unity Band ) will get even bigger in the future is anyone’s guess. But with as restless an innovator as Metheny anything is possible and you can see much more clearly with this record that there is huge possibility for the Unity Group to grow into a Unity Orchestra, a fascinating thought.
In release terms 2013 saw Metheny embrace the avant garde once more, his most successful attempt in that regard to date following on from fulfilling explorations in the Ornette Coleman and Derek Bailey sound universe. But last year also let his long term followers pick up the Orchestrion story once again even if that was a case of completing a story that had already unfolded.
The nine tracks here, by stylistic and conceptual contrast, recorded in June 2013 in a New York studio, features exclusively Metheny’s music, the style whether balladic or anthemic as familiar as the face of your very best friend even when the tunes happen to be brand new. ‘Born’ beginning with acoustic guitar and then becoming achingly bluesy is the big tune, as good as anything Metheny has ever written at such a slow tempo, so for this alone Kin (←→) is essential, but hear it in the context of the album at least the first time around. And Potter interprets the melody with so much tenderness that it almost hurts. The presence of saxophone made all the difference when the Unity Band first emerged, and Chris Potter’s role is as important here as it was then and yet there's so much more with for instance Ben Williams’ bass figures on a song such as ‘We Go On’ drawing you in mercilessly.
There are subtle and welcome shifts in Metheny’s writing for the Unity Group, the guitarist’s use of his innovative orchestrionics less pronounced and Carmassi fills a lot of gaps, weaving dreams of Metheny's left unrealised in the earlier instrumental palette. Kin (←→) has some very complex sinewy textures and a great deal of advanced production work (the sound is handsomely real nonethelessss), and is an absorbing listen.
Fans may think to divide along Unity Band/Group lines, but it’s clear that this is a deepening of Metheny’s new approach to small group jazz rather than encroaching on anything already laid down in stone; and it's also an attempt to break out from constricting structures that seem to affect acoustic jazz more egregiously than fusion. For that alone and in a year when the great Missourian turns 60 Metheny should gain maximum respect.
Released on 3 February