A year after his auspicious debut, Pat Metheny returned to the ECM label with a lineup that’s very close to what would become the first incarnation of the Pat Metheny Group. With Danny Gottlieb on drums and Lyle Mays on piano, Watercolors had the great Eberhard Weber on bass; a slot that would end up being filled by Mark Egan on the next album.
In contrast to “Bright Size Life,” “Watercolors” provides the first concrete example of The Group sound, the main harmonic feature being the presentation of a long-form melody. It’s not that Metheny was stepping outside the rules (that would happen later), but his line of thought traced itself through the chord changes while putting nearly complete emphasis on the story being told.
One summer in the mid-1980s, I spent a week on an island off the coast of Maine. Every morning I would get up and pop in my homemade cassette of this album. To this day I associate it’s pensive opening chord sequence with the smell of fresh coffee mingled with the scent of sea air.
Up next: Icefire
[amazon_enhanced asin=”B000W1W8T8″ container=”B00136LTXM” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B000W1Q64G” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B000026FDG” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /]
- How Eric Clapton’s ‘Me and Mr. Johnson’ Made the Case for British Blues - March 20, 2024
- Why Todd Rundgren’s ‘Back to the Bars’ Remains So Powerful - December 13, 2023
- Reevaluating Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’ - September 11, 2023
