Given the range of endeavors Pat Metheny has pursued since beginning to work under his own name nearly a half-century ago, it’s noteworthy that his solo projects are among the most distinctive. Last year’s Dream Box was just such a stellar work, and now Moondial also joins the niche Pat carved with 2003’s One Quiet Night and What It’s All About eight years later.
Like its three counterparts, Moondial is first and foremost impressive on a technical level. A gifted guitarist to begin with, Metheny has honed his talent over years of touring and recording to the point a temptation arises to take for granted the precision and nuance of his playing. Yet even as he sounds effortless in both interpretations of this title song, he also radiates the sense of a job well done. 
Nevertheless, Pat’s fretboard excursions are really no more of a given than the clarity of the audio applied to this all-acoustic outing. Recorded between tours on a custom-built nylon-stringed baritone guitar, then mixed and mastered respectively by Pete Karam and Ted Jensen, there are no overdubs on any of the baker’s dozen tracks. Highlighting the special tuning Metheny devised for the instrument, the process nevertheless compels thoughts about how many takes were required to reach satisfactory renditions).
Inspired by the novel possibilities of the new instrument (right down to the strings themselves), the range of material on Moondial is at once a reaffirmation and exhibition of the Missouri-born musician’s eclectic tastes. The selections come across in a seamless whole wherein the revisitation of a tune originally done by Metheny’s Unity Band in 2012, “This Belongs to You.” resides comfortably next to John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “Here, There and Everywhere.”
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