Pat Metheny
Bright Size Life

In the distant 1975, the first album of Pat Metheny was released when he was just twenty-one years old. On bass, Jaco Pastorius, not yet a member of Weather Report, and Bob Moses on drums, known from the Gary Burton Band.

The album doesn't fully reflect the potential that the group could express, a matter of experience (a couple of tracks were really under-tested), although Pat's personal sounds are already taking shape. Pat enjoys himself and expresses the sensations of the "physical relationship he has with his guitar", putting into music all the ideas he prefers. The trio is a strong incentive for this artist from Lee's Summit because he has to tackle both melody and harmony.

From a compositional and performance point of view, it is an excellent album. All the tracks are impactful, assembled in a peculiar way. Today "Bright Size Life" is a deeply spiritual album for Pat, especially thinking of Jaco. Except for an Ornette Coleman medley, "Round Trip/Broadway Blues", still very fresh, all the pieces are composed by Metheny himself. One of the most complete albums in his discography, with the contribution of an excellent lineup. The simple harmonies counteract certain canons of the time present in blues forms or jazz standards. It's the Metheny Style. The guitar solo is always very melodic, and there is a clear search for "distant notes", almost like a pattern. I'm referring specifically to "Bright Size Life", which gives the album its title, and "Unity Village".

"Unity Village" is named after a nearby locality of Lee's Summit, where Pat used to spend his holidays as a boy, "Uniquit Road" was composed in previous years for pub performances, where the trio was testing their empathy. In these two tracks, Pat plays the Gibson Es175, overdubbed twice. The solos are very articulated in a colorful blend of tones. Many of the compositions openly reference the artist's places of origin in their climates and musical atmospheres. "Missouri Uncompromised" is an intense blues where Jaco gives his best. In "Sirabhorn" and "Midwestern Nights Dream", Pat uses just one guitar, the Fender Coronado 12-string electric, and ventures into one of his first strange alternative tunings. It's a perfectly crafted melody for Jaco, allowing the bassist to perform a highly impactful solo. "Omaha Celebration" has a refined melody with a South American flavor and an extraordinary bass line.

Pat "delivers" most of the tracks in an immediate manner, in the most varied occasions, in the solitude of hotel rooms, at unimaginable hours, driven by sensations, melancholy, feelings, and perceptions characterized by spontaneous immediacy. An album with a delightful and fascinating freshness of sound. A talent, that of the Missouri guitarist, that finds the freedom of expression by drawing from every encounter, absorbing the talent of artists heard on the road, constantly learning techniques and attitudes, avidly making every inspiration his own, then filling it with personality, which would emerge and explode in the years to come. The young man is greatly talented: it's evident to many fellow musicians who say that working with him is a pleasure for the innate sense of spatial texture, for the innovative capacity regarding expressiveness and phrasing, a sort of "king of lyricism", to quote the late Brecker.

Many years after its release, this album remains undoubtedly among the most successful and has aged beautifully. Pat's guitar, even without synth, is never flat or monotonous. It is like a "voice", spontaneous, melodic, and expressive.