Pat Metheny – ‘MoonDial’

MoonDial is the third solo album Pat Metheny has recorded on baritone guitar, of which he’s had three built for him by the renowned Canadian luthier Linda Manzer. (She also built many of his other instruments, including his famous three-necked, 42-string Pikasso guitar.) The two previous albums were One Quiet Night (2003), which mixed Metheny originals and covers, and What’s It All About (2011), the first Metheny album to feature only covers. Both won Grammys, for (rather surprisingly) best New Age album.

Metheny’s choice of covers on MoonDial embraces the standard songbook and more recent popular music, a taste reflected in his own compositional gift for lyricism and hooky melodies: ‘You’re Everything’ (Chick Corea); ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ (Lennon/McCartney); the traditional ‘Londonderry Air‘ (aka ‘Danny Boy’); ‘Everything Happens to Me / Somewhere’ (the latter of this pairing being a Bernstein tune from West Side Story); and two tunes from 1950s movies that became jazz standards, ‘My Love and I’ (aka ‘Love Theme from Apache’) and ‘Angel Eyes’ (from the movie Jennifer). 

As expected from a musician of Metheny’s calibre, all the covers are extensively reinterpreted, aided by the possibilities unleashed by an instrument that is naturally tuned a fourth or fifth lower than a conventional guitar, with the twist that Metheny raises the middle two strings by an octave. In a video promoting the album, he explains that this unusual tuning enabled him to take advantage of open strings, and find odd keys and voicings that would be impossible to play on a conventional guitar. 

One noticeable effect of this tuning is a much greater sense of an independent bass line, the bottom two strings being so much lower than their neighbours. This is further enhanced by Metheny using nylon strings rather than the steel strings he’d used on the previous two albums. Metheny said he struggled to find nylon strings that could handle that level of tension ‘without a) breaking or b) sounding like a banjo,’ but once he did, it opened up ‘a whole new palette of sound’. Indeed, that change from steel to nylon does make a huge difference, the sound darker and even mellower than on his other albums. 

Curiously, the mood also feels slower than the two earlier albums, despite the tempi being fairly similar. This lends credence to scientific evidence that notes played in a lower pitch or darker timbre are perceived as being played at a slower tempo than higher, brighter notes. The only time the tempo feels brisk is on the Metheny original ‘Shoga’, which is all strummed chords and no picked melody, as if Metheny were simply enjoying the physicality of playing this unusual instrument, of exploring that new palette of colours.

For an album whose mood is so nocturnal – dark, mellow, time-stretching – MoonDial is a particularly apt title. It might sound like a koan of the type ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ (‘If a sundial throws daytime shadows to tell the time, what does a moondial do?’), but apparently there is such a thing as a moondial: it is accurate only on a full moon, losing on average 48 minutes every night thereafter (but gaining an average of 48 minutes every night preceding the full moon). Any listener of MoonDial will gain 61 minutes of music that can be enjoyed any time, but it’s perhaps especially suited to night owls or insomniacs needing a mellow vibe to soothe them through the night. As for Metheny himself, what he might gain is a third New Age Grammy for a solo baritone guitar album.