Track Listing

1. Watercolors
2. Icefire
3. Oasis
4. Lakes
5. River Quay
6. Suite: I. Florida Greeting Song
7. II. Legend of the Fountain
8. Sea Song

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #375156 in Music
• Released on: 1994-05-10
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) pressing. Universal. 2008.

Amazon.com
Pat Metheny was virtually defining a new musical form on this 1977 date, blending folk, country, and pop elements with jazz and creating a gentler, more intimate idiom than fusion had been. His distinctively chorused electric guitar often floats over the smooth textures created by his own acoustic six-stringer, Lyle Mays's piano, and Danny Gottlieb's discreet drumming, while Eberhard Weber's electric and acoustic bass lines rise to ricochet with the guitar leads. The song titles abound with watery images, and they're perfectly in keeping with this flowing music, which tends to a pale, even pastel, palette and an ethereal lightness. "River Quay," particularly, suggests the sound of the Pat Metheny Group that would come later. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Deep Personal Meanings for this wonderful CD
This is, I believe, Pat M.'s most underappreciated recording. First listened to in 1979 (my second PMG purchase, the first being the famous "White Album", bought on a recommendation of a fellow Graduate student - a recommendation that significantly changed my music listening life!), this CD symbolizes the exciting early dating days with my wife of 20 plus years, my wonderful experience at Dartmouth college, and my music listening evolution of Rock into Jazz, particularly that on the ECM label.

This is very pure music - no synthesizers, no unusual guitar effects, just emotive story telling from a very promising, very young talent that has created a remarkably consistenly excellent body of music that is his alone, and that easily becomes a vital part of everyone's CD collection. There are no weak cuts on the CD (typical of Metheny's output), and some, such as the incredible Sea Song, are amongst my favorite music of all time. Eberhard Weber adds a distinctive flavor to the session that was not repeated on any other Metheny CD.

This music does not age, does not go out of date or style-so give it a try, and do yourself and mental well-being a big favor!

Metheny in search of himself
I am a relatively new Pat Metheny fan but I have been working my way through jazz history for the last seven years or so, and Pat seems to be the next step. Anyone who says jazz died in the 60s clearly has no appreciation for the great work of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, and artists like them through the seventies, but I will admit to thinking for a long time that nothing innovative came after them. I was wrong, as many Pat Metheny fans will attest to.

I bought this recently, after being really impressed and moved by Pat's first album, "Bright Size Life." This album follows in a similar vein; it's mellow, with midwest America and folk music influences, and many of the grooves eschew traditional swing but aren't hard enough to be funk and lack the polyrhythms to be Latin. The result is a kind of floating, straight-eighth note feel that lives on the cymbals, one I haven't heard on anything before Metheny's work. The title track, "Lakes," and "River Quay" all make use of this feel, and the result is a lot of rhythmic freedom and interaction for Pat, bassist Eberhard Weber, pianist Lyle Mays, and drummer Dan Gottlieb. The other tunes don't make as much use of this groove; "Icefire" is a haunting Metheny solo on 12 string guitar, and the suite is very minimalist in instrumentation as well. "Oasis" and "Sea Song" are atmospheric and don't have any strong rhythmic feel at all; one can see how they could be forerunners of new age music, albeit a lot more sophisticated in harmony.

With Pat Metheny, there is always the risk of hearing the music through the filters of the watered-down crap we call smooth jazz; Metheny's mellow sound clearly influenced a lot of inferior (.......). But on tunes like "Lakes," with its ultra-hip set of chord changes, or the title track's shifting time signatures, the only thing "smooth" about this music is how seamlessly it all fits together. That having been said, I have a couple of gripes about this record. Having heard the next album Metheny would record, the self-titled "Pat Metheny Group," this album seems a little too eclectic to hang together, even with the water theme to serve as a thread. It's as if Pat was trying to figure out which direction to go, and some are more successful than others. I love the title track, "Lakes," "River Quay," and to a lesser extent "Icefire" and the suite, but the more new age sounding tunes wander a little too much to hold my attention. Also, Lyle Mays at this point sounds like a Keith Jarrett (......) (forgivable, since Jarrett was top dog on the ECM label at this point and ever since) and his use of two grace notes at the beginning of almost every phrase gets annoying after a while. Still, his playing is really tasty and compliments Metheny's conception really really well. It's no wonder that the two would stay together for 30 years, continuing to make music.

All in all, this album has some great moments but is not perfect. I enjoy it a lot and would recommend it, along with "Bright Size Life," to jazz fans looking to get into Pat Metheny. It is also fairly accessible to non-jazz fans, since there is nothing overtly sonically offensive, even though some people might find a couple of these tunes a little strange upon closer listening. There is a lot of good and very little to complain about with this brilliant but inconsistent album. Highly recommended.

A perfect synthesis of the Master's music.
A peek into the future, then and now. The gorgeous compositions on Watercolors (listened to 22 years ago) gave the listener a glimpse of the sophistication and varied styles that were to appear in albums several years later. For the new listener, this album is the best synthesis of Pat's amazingly varied musical styles. Perhaps the favorite in my 23-year-old collection.