Day Trip : Pat Metheny : Review : Rolling Stone

Guitarist Pat Metheny doesn't make enough records in a trio setting. And the few so far have been short-term stands: the perfectly titled Bright Size Life (1976), with bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses; later dates with major elders like bassists Charlie Haden and Dave Holland and drummer Roy Haynes; Metheny's 2000 band with Bill Stewart and Larry Grenadier. Day Trip is Metheny's first record with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez, and it should not be the last. McBride and Sanchez are jazzmen with R&B and rock bones, the former combining a fluid touch with assertive momentum, punching counter-rhythms between Sanchez's snare-and-tom exclamations. In "The Red One," McBride and Sanchez push hard in funk and reggae time, forcing Metheny to throw dirt on his tone and attack. Metheny thrives in a trio format — the space suits his spiraling runs and the afterring in his pointed electric sound — and he responds here with excited improvising in the hypersamba "Son of Thirteen" and the vintage-Wes Montgomery stroll of "Calvin's Keys." An exception: "Is This America? (Katrina 2005)," a subdued but emphatic challenge that needs no words to make its point.