_{Chris Potter, Giulio Carmassi, Ben Williams, Antonio Sánchez, and Pat Metheny}

Playing the Lowry Salford and the Hammersmith Apollo for the first time the new Pat Metheny Unity Group's Kin with the squiggly graphic tacked on, (←→), released in February, can't have been an easy album to make building on the earlier Unity Band remarkable at the time for Metheny adding saxophone to his compositional palette. This time there's the addition for Group purposes of Italian-born multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi, a new star nothing if not versatile, credited as playing 11 instruments, a departure that has gradually nudged Metheny into the completion of a 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.

The nine tracks, 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, and is an absorbing listen. How it will translate live only the Salford and London audiences will get to know for real. SG