Review Summary: The perfect soundtrack for your next travel around the world.
In the fusion scenario Pat Metheny Group is one of the most important landmarks. While its founder Pat Metheny has a solo career more inclined to classic jazz, in his side project he likes to experiment a lot, combining fusion with world music. The PMG has never released a bad album throughout its career, and
We Live Here is a summary of what I loved from its predecessors. The album is mainly written by the two stable members of the group, Pat Metheny and the pianist Lyle Mays. Mays composes the complex harmony that supports every track, and Metheny writes the solid and extremely catchy melodies. He says that he plays what he’d like to listen to, and you can find this philosophy in all of his works. Jazz’s no longer a weird genre played by music theorists, but relaxing music that everyone can enjoy, or at least, this is what they will make you believe.
The album opens brightly with “Here To Stay” which starts with three isolated piano chords that create a little tension, and before you can realize it, all the instruments except for the guitar are in, with the drums that hold on a vigorous shuffle tempo. Then comes the guitar with the main theme, which’s so immediate and simple that you can even sing it, but not for this is foregone. In this case the guitar does exactly what the voice would do, Metheny is making his guitar sing with an unbelievable expressivity, just using a catchy theme. Then comes the chorus, with the human voices. Clearly the human voices here are just an instrument like another, don’t expect them to sing something because they won’t. If you are familiar with the band, you’ll surely be reminded of “Have You Heard” from
Letter From Home. There, the way the voices are used is something incredible, and probably you thought “Wow, I want more things like this”, yet it fits better here than in the original album, because every track is along the line of it, the unforgettable theme sung by human voices in “Red Sky” or the chorus of “And Then I Knew”, or even the pre-solo of “To The End of The World” are clear examples of this.
Always talking about solos, the best ones of Metheny until this point are all in
Offramp, all performed using his more unique than rare synth guitar. The previously mentioned “To The End of The World” and “Red Sky” follow what can be called the
Offramp style, in each of these two tracks, Metheny performs an amazing solo, full of the smoothest tonality changes. It should be kept in mind that tonality changes are always a little shock for the ear, and the difficulty for the composer is not to make them appear evident, and he achieves this goal brilliantly. Nevertheless they are easily recognizable, for example during the solo he repeats a note a lot of times, and suddenly in the middle of this the backing track assumes a total different taste, but without paying particularly attention probably you won’t notice it.
We Live Here features also some tracks that are more inclined to the classic jazz from his first records, like “Stranger in Town” which begins with a guitar riff that will lead the piece into a clean solo, which flows into a more fusion/funky part with a strong line of slap bass. “Episode d'Azur” and the more romantic “Something to Remind You” are also perfect examples of tracks with the flavor of past albums, with quiet piano and string sections.
In conclusion,
We Live Here is an unbelievably strong and sweet album, a milestone on the road for the Pat Metheny Group that proves that technique and melodies can easily coexist. All the tracks are worth and ironically if I had to say which is the weaker one, I would say it's the title track. The other ones are all highly recommended.
What makes this an excellent album? The solid and well written themes, the entertaining and technical solos, the as original as unusual approaches to the human voices and the catchy melodies that they sing, and finally the almost eternal replayability.
