Pat Metheny Group

CD version. Pat Metheny Group is the 1978 debut of the band that guitarist Pat Metheny would lead for more than three decades, and the record where its sound first took shape. Recorded in Oslo in January 1978 for ECM, it introduced the quartet with keyboardist Lyle Mays, bassist Mark Egan and drummer Danny Gottlieb. Three of the six pieces are joint Metheny and Mays compositions, among them Phase Dance, which became one of the group's signature tunes.

Manfred Eicher produced the session at Talent Studio, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer. Metheny had already made two albums for the label. Bright Size Life (1976) was a trio with Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses, and Watercolors (1977) was the first record on which Mays and Gottlieb played with him. Here Metheny plays 6- and 12-string guitars. Mays plays piano, Oberheim synthesizer and autoharp, and his keyboards give the music its breadth, while Egan's electric bass and Gottlieb's drums keep it light and moving.

San Lorenzo opens the album at over ten minutes. It moves from sparse guitar chords to acoustic piano over busy hi-hat, settles into a reflective piano interlude, then builds to a passage where guitar and piano share the lead. Phase Dance rides a pulsing beat and a catchy guitar riff, with a synthesizer wash behind it and a piano solo from Mays over Egan's bass. Jaco, named after Pastorius, sets an extended Metheny solo over a funk groove and leaves space for a bass solo. The short solo guitar piece Aprilwind then leads into the brighter April Joy, and Lone Jack closes at speed.

The album fixed the shape of a group that kept Metheny and Mays together until the 2000s, with the keyboardist as co-writer of much of its music. Writing in Jazz Journal after Mays died in 2020, Fred Grand pointed to the "elegant acoustic piano flights and rich keyboard textures" heard across the group's records. Reviewing a vinyl reissue for Audiophile Audition in 2018, Robbie Gerson found that four decades later it "remains a stellar jazz album".

This is the CD edition, catalogue number ECM 1114, of the album first released in March 1978.