PAT METHENY & LYLE MAYS: AS FALLS WICHITA, SO FALLS WICHITA FALLS

I'm not much a Pat Metheny fan. I have a couple of his recordings, heard most of them up through the mid 90s, and even saw him in concert a couple of times. And this is still the only album of his I like enough to listen to. And I think it's because he shared the compositional duties with his keyboardist, Lyle Mays.

All of side one of the LP is a single track, the title track to be exact, and it's a moody, spacy piece, that consists of Metheny and Mays trading the lead in an almost-but-not-quite new age piece. They play open, airy solos on their instruments over a bacdrop of distant voices, and Nana Vasconcelos' subtle percussion.

The second side is closer to the more well known Metheny sound. The songs are not bad, but it's not a style that draws me in.

4.5 stars for side one, 2.75 stars for side two= 3.63 stars.