Pat Metheny - MoonDial / U.S. copy

2024

Like Metheny's previous recordings One Quiet Night (2003) and What’s It All About (2011), MoonDial is purely a solo guitar record with no overdubs, recorded on baritone guitar. The album also features Metheny's takes on Chick Corea’s You’re Everything, Lennon and McCartney’s Here, There and Everywhere, Matt Dennis’ Angel Eyes and Everything Happens To Me (the latter combined with Leonard Bernstein’s Somewhere).

"[Last fall’s tour] represented not just the sound and vibe of the Dream Box release, but really was an opportunity for me to look at all the other ways I have released records and done occasional performances in a solo setting across the years," Metheny explains. "Each one of those solo recordings, and Dream Box as well, are unlike the others. The idea for me is to try to keep coming up with different angles and ways of thinking about music while hopefully keeping a fundamental aesthetic at work in all of it. In other words, to continue the research.

"For the 50+ concerts I just finished, I introduced this new instrument and this new sound. At first it was just one tune. Then two. By the time the tour was over, the new nylon-string Baritone guitar could be twenty or twenty-five minutes of the whole concert."