In a style that would fully bloom years later with the emergence of Pat’s Pikasso guitar, “Suite: II. Legends Of The Fountain” has Metheny spinning up beautiful melodies and arpeggios supported by deep pedal tones and artificial harmonics. I could be wrong, but I’m assuming that the harp guitar was employed here.
For the first minute and a half of the composition, the pairings of tone and response seem like groups of unconnected ideas…but then, with less than a minute to go, Pat draws them all together and plays a theme might have been a comfortable conclusion to the album proper. Might have been, as we still have “Sea Song,” which will complete the story.
Up next: Sea Song
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You can hear, and feel, some real connections between this piece and his two (somewhat) recent solo acoustic efforts, “One Quiet Night” and “What’s It All About”. This is a different Metheny. His solo acoustic work always draws me in and really ends up in a different portion of my brain than his electric and Group outings. He has a way of playing where he doesn’t appear to commit to anything, yet the time passes and beautiful music is produced. His approach towards the instrument is so integrated with his compositional style and sense of melody, that (I swear) he is just screwing around sometimes, and nearly “fully baked” music is the result. In the early 2000’s, he was opening a lot of PMG shows with very loose takes on his re-vamped version of “Last Train Home”, played solo on the baritone. Basically, he was warming up, but I recall thinking after seeing this roughly 10 minute intro to the show…. “Well, I can go home now. This can’t get any better.”