Pat Metheny Group - The Way Up
Product Information
Track List: The Way Up
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- Opening - Pat Methany GroupDownload & Buy
- Part One - Pat Methany GroupDownload & Buy
- Part Two - Pat Methany Group
- Part Three - Pat Methany Group
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Album Details: The Way Up
- Release Date:
- 01/25/2005
- Label:
- Nonesuch
- UPC:
- 075597987621
User Reviews: The Way Up
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The Way Up takes The Pat Metheny Group even higher
, February 23, 2005Reviewer: m.morris1@sbcglobal.net - See all m.morris1@sbcglobal.net's reviews -
Pat Metheney The Way Up
, February 1, 2005Reviewer: samgrubb_97330 - See all samgrubb_97330's reviews4 of 7 Yahoo! Users found this The Way Up review helpfulPros: It's the Pat Metheney Group
Cons: It's a rehash of all the old stuff - nothing new
Quite possibly the least inspired of all Pat's work. This recording makes acceptable background noise, but doesn't hold up to close listening. A near complete disappointment.
read all (6) user reviews for The Way Up
Pro Reviews: The Way Up
| EXPERT RATING: From AMG Reviews The Way Up is the Pat Metheny Group's debut offering for Nonesuch Records. Comprised of a single, sprawling, 68minute composition by Metheny and Lyle Mays divided into four sections on CD it is an unprecedented new direction for the band. The lineup is the same as on the live Speak of Now from 2003 Metheny and Mays on keyboards, bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Antonio Sanchéz, and trumpeter/vocalist Cuong Vu. New to the roster is Swiss/American harmonicat Gregoire Maret. While the sound here is instantly recognizable as PMG, it is dazzling and labyrinthine in shape, sound, and texture. Painstakingly composed, The Way Up also offers large open sections for solo improvisation and group interplay. The work's theme is stated in part one, unfolding gradually as skeletal layered guitars, samples, and other gentle electronics ease the frame into view, Sanchéz's drumming creating an insistent pulse. Mays' piano and Metheny's guitar engage in contrapuntal arpeggios and Vu enters haltingly with the actual line before the ensemble engages it as a whole. Brief melodic interludes usher in the longish second section seamlessly, where lyric fragments become fullblown statements, as the band's trademark restrained dynamic slips in unobtrusively before erupting into sheer euphoria with layered, crunchy, and fat sixstrings, lilting harmonicas, and trumpets in tandem, all buoyed by Mays and Rodby, who underscore Sanchéz's skittering cymbal dance. As it progresses, the band takes more chances, walking out onto a ledge and simply jumping off while never losing the deep, lush lyricism inherent in the composition's body. The thematic body and the hook at its core are infectious. These, too, open inwardly to an entirely new set of musical ideas in the middle of the section that changes no less than three times in its 26minute duration. Mays' piano, an acoustic guitar, and Rodby's fretless bass tiptoe ghostlike into part three before Vu once more shimmers and spatters colorful notes across the top in a hush before allowing Maret to bring the entire line into being. Spare, careful, and emotionally moving, it builds until the entire band gels and cracks it into a breezy elegant walk through airy harmonics and slippery rhythms before notions of counterpoint, dense syncopated rhythmic figures (à la Steve Reich), and tight, tense dynamics segue into the final section. Here is where all previous elements come together into a swinging whole. Fueled by Mays' ostinato in the intro, Metheny's soloing winds around the outside, punctuating and stretching it as electronics paint the backdrop. The band locks into the groove before Maret and Vu add banners of expressionistic color. The Way Up feels more like a jazz concerto than anything else. If anything, it may actually be the record Metheny and Mays have been trying to make for over two decades. It is the place between the cracks, where defined genres disappear into a poetic whole and what emerges is something utterly new, guided and inspired by the limitless creativity of the jazz tradition. - Thom Jurek, All Music Guide |
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Pat Metheny Group Biography
One of the most original guitarists from the '80s onward (he is instantly recognizable), Pat Metheny is a chance-taking player who has gained great popularity but also taken some wild left turns. His records with the Pat Metheny Group are difficult t...Full Pat Metheny Group Biography
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-- ©2008 All Media Guide, LLC
Pros: Invigorating, creative, exciting
Cons: some of the softer parts are hard to hear
Pat is certainly one of my favorite musicians and composers and I've been excited about the release of every disc he's been a part of for the past ten years. When I read that this was to be a single, 68 minute long tune, I did worry that I'd have another Zero Tolerance For Silence or Sign of Four on my hands. The best I can say about these is that I'm working to appreciate them.
But this album is everything that I hoped for. Longtime fans should love it because it seems to take the best musical ideas of Pat and Lyle Mays' many years of collaboration and expand them in a panoramic journey. I do not hear strains of old tunes here, but I get a strong sense of them. I'm not sure if that point communicates to anyone not familiar with the groups music, but I suspect fans will know what I mean.
Metheny has stated that The Way Up is a protest album. I think it is worth the trouble to go to the group's website and see what he means by this. But one thing he says is that the album can be seen as a "protest against a world where a lack of nuance and detail is considered a good thing, a protest against a culture that values that which can be consumed in the smallest bites over the kinds of efforts and achievements that can only come with a lifetime of work and study." I hope that reproducing these thoughts does not lead people to think this is pretentious music where the expected to feel like an idiot if he doesn't "get it."
Metheny and company as accessible as they have always been without sacrificing integrity. The Way Up, as a composition and as a recording, works on some pretty deep levels I'm only now starting to get at. At the same time, the experience of listening on the surface level is only heightened by repeated listenings. This is a rich, thoughtful piece that may well come to be viewed as a landmark in the ever blossoming history of jazz. ...