Pat Metheny: What's It All About - review

This unaccompanied acoustic guitar album (recorded alone, late at night, and sounding like it) is the first Metheny has made in his four-decade career in which there isn't a single original. All 10 tracks (including Girl from Ipanema, the Beatles' And I Love Her, and The Sound of Silence, alongside lesser-known pieces) have had a special meaning for him, some going back to childhood. The Sound of Silence, played on the Pikasso harp-guitar, is given a reverential treatment fitfully twisted by enigmatic harmonies and tonalities resembling a Japanese shamisen. Alfie begins as quiet as a distantly ringing bell and is then explored with graceful respect for its famous theme, but Girl From Ipanema is a moody, often tempo-less rumination on the samba hit that completely remodels it. There are a few groovers, such as the rock-meets-flamenco account of the 60s surf hit Pipeline, and a tranquilly pulsating visit to the 70s Stylistics hit Betcha By Golly Wow. An unfussy, nylon-string version of And I Love Her is one of the standouts of a typically subtle (though occasionally rather distantly private) exercise in guitar lyricism.