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Guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny has done it all in the course of his career, and on his own terms. He's recorded in solo, duo, and trio formats and with groups of various sizes; he's composed film soundtracks, led bands with the likes of Ornette Coleman, made a variety of guest appearances, and toured all over the world. Yet it's with his own Pat Metheny Group, an outfit that he and keyboardist Lyle Mays began some 25 years ago, that he has made much of his arguably best and certainly most popular music. So it is, then, that any Metheny Group concert recording is a welcome addition to his catalog. That's certainly true in the case of this 1995 Japanese show, even though much of the material (five of 13 songs) on We Live Here is drawn from the album of that name, which was not one of the group's finest. At its best (as on Metheny "classics" like "First Circle" and "Minuano"), the Metheny Group's music isn't really jazz, or what's usually called fusion, or world music, but rather a fluid, distinctive blend of them all; it's improvised yet composed, often quite beautiful ("Farmer's Trust," "Antonia") but also frequently challenging ("Scrap Metal"). Metheny, Mays, and the five other members of the group are all superb players, and play is exactly what they do--this is a no-frills enterprise, with some brief musician interviews between tracks (plus superb Dolby 5.1 digital or stereo sound) but no bonus DVD features. That's no surprise. With Pat Metheny it's always been strictly about the music, and that's enough. --Sam Graham
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