Pat Metheny – Zero Tolerance For Silence

This is an extreme, and extremely underrated masterpiece. Taking his supreme knowledge of the guitar while distorting it (literally) to the extent of near Velvet Underground Pain, he demonstrates with certainty that even grinding noise can be lyrical and beautiful. Certainly not music for sleeping, nor it is background music. This gets in your face, gets under your skin and under his thumb. The closest comparison is Terry Kath's "Free Form Guitar" or perhaps the work of Sonny Sharrock and / or Fred Frith. But, alas, Metheny is in a class to himself and this is essential listening to round out your understanding of the guy who makes all that smooth jazz. There is quite literally nothing this guy can't do.

Despite Metheny's claims that it's "easy" to play noise (and that this album proves it), what Zero Tolerance For Silence actually shows is how difficult it is to make noise music compelling, and that he can't actually approach the inventiveness and sheer drama that the 'best' noise guitarists offer. For curiosity and completism only.

This is finally available on vinyl, for the freaks out there.

Metheny indulging himself into mostly guitar noise, for once, and without apparent purpose: even though he had some messy improv moments across his career making a whole album out of these could only appeal to a selected few who enjoy either distorted sonics or free improvisational music, or both. Yet despite how loose and dissonant these numbers are, they are indeed structured to a certain degree, so its not (entirely) free improv: wouldn't call it jazz, wouldn't call it rock ('Part 3' does have a rocky rhythm to it but that's it), so what is it then? A formless experiment in electric guitar maybe, perhaps just Metheny trying to reach a certain edge between music and noise because why not ('oh, the edge', may you exclaim): in the end, something rather unappealing, so it has the right choice of both underlying concept and album artwork.
There is a genius behind it, however: freaking Pat Metheny, no less. Thing is, you could either find it or being completely unable to do so, in this dense collection of guitar excess. I personally like this one in theory, yet i rarely play it: one of these records you can admire from a distance. Good music is supposed to demand a closer inspection and repeated listenings: interesting music, on the other hand...