On stage, Pat Metheny’s almost always stationary. He’s either looking down, face obscured by hair, coaxing his Ibanez PM signature model to sing with impossible beauty. Or he’s sitting, finger-picking an acoustic guitar with the utmost precision and grace.
But musically, he just can’t stand still. Between February 2020 and September 2021 he released three albums that embraced elegant, richly orchestrated jazz (From This Place), chamber music in the grand classical tradition (Road To The Sun), and a 21st century take on the 1960s “organ trio” (Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV)).
The latter, accompanied by a global tour of over 100 dates including tonight’s performance at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo, is more than just another addition to a catalogue already spanning 50-something releases. It’s also more than a live album featuring three new songs, a couple of rarities, and reimaginings of highlights from the jazz legend’s four-decade recording career. It’s the first offering by a long-gestating Metheny project, also called Side-Eye, that sees the 20-time Grammy winner collaborating with an ever-evolving lineup of younger musicians.
The current members joining him across Europe are drummer Joe Dyson (who’s performed with the likes of Dr. Lonnie Smith, Jon Batiste, and Nicholas Payton) and keyboard player Chris Fishman. Both are, as to be expected, phenomenal musicians.
Dyson, who began performing in church at the age of two, is the epitome of a New Orleans musician. Versed in gospel, R&B, Afro, and (of course) jazz, he’s just as comfortable shimmering cymbals as he is pounding out bazooka rhythms — sometimes within the same song — without seeming to break a sweat.
Fishman appears to be just as relaxed, despite being surrounded by banks of keyboards on four sides. With no bass player in the Side-Eye lineup, he’s tasked with honouring basslines immortalised by the likes of Jaco Pastorius with his left hand, while playing complex organ, piano, or synth parts with his right. It’s little wonder that, by the age of 24, he’s already worked with names like Flying Lotus and Thundercat.
Together with their generous band leader — whose words tonight are limited to introducing the duo, and who graciously acknowledges their performances with arm gestures as broad as his smile — they revitalise Metheny classics like Bright Size Life, Phase Dance, and Always and Forever.
But these aren’t reworkings for the hell of it. Metheny may always be looking for the new, but he hasn’t gone all Dylan with the arrangements. The beloved melodies are all there, to the extent that the opening bars of staples like Are You Going With Me and Song For Bilbao are greeted with cheers of instant recognition. The Pikasso guitar is also present and accounted for, enabling Metheny to open the show in spectacular style, a flurry of fingers dancing across its 42 strings in hypnotic fashion. The Roland GR-300 Guitar Synthesiser shows up more than once during the 150-minute performance tonight, its familiar brassy tones adding even more dimension to the Side-Eye sound. And there are those beloved moments when the guitarist is up on the Hammersmith stage alone, alternately using his fingers and a plectrum as he strips down songs like Minuano (Six Eight) — as part of a thrilling medley also including the likes of September Fifteenth and This Is Not America — to mesmeric effect.
That effect’s only amplified by the lack of raised mobile phones in the audience — at the artist’s request — and extends to the rarities and two new offerings from the Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) album. Timeline, originally written for Michael Brecker’s 1999 LP Time Is of the Essence, is one of the former with Metheny’s slippery licks intertwining beautifully with Fishman’s organ heroics. In the latter category, It Starts When We Disappear adds spacey synths, skittery rhythms, and hints of prog to the palette, while the cinematic Zenith Blue has the three men on stage sounding, not for the first time, like a far bigger band.
With performances like tonight’s, Side-Eye won’t just satisfy the Metheny fans who’ve been there since 1975. They’re bound to grab a whole new audience too.
Pat Metheny
Eventim Apollo, London
12th June 2022
Photo: Simon Reed
- This article originally appeared on Louder Than War.
Nils van der Linden 