Trio 99-00 Pat Metheny Warner, 2000 Buy it online Tracks 1: (Go) Get It 2: Giant Steps 3: Just Like The Day 4: Soul Cowboy 5: The Sun In Montreal 6: Capricorn 7: We Had A Sister 8: What Do You Want 9: A Lot Of Livin' To Do 10: Lone Jack 11: Travels   Reviewed by David Middleton	Looking at the austere album packaging of Pat Metheny's Trio 99-00 you get the impression that what you are in for is going to be a no-frills, stripped down, no-nonsense jazz workout. Gone are the usual cast and crew members that fans are more accustomed to hearing Metheny play with. In their place for this album are bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart. Gone also are Metheny's guitar synths and the lush, sweeping atmospherics of Lyle Mays' keyboards. That doesn't mean that this album is lacking in any way. Quite the contrary. Trio is a sharp and tightly produced recording with lots of spontaneity in the playing. And despite the fact that Metheny is not surrounded by the familiar rich overdubs and electronic soundscapes that are typical of most of his albums, Trio sounds full and rich and is saturated with some of the finest playing I've heard from Metheny. Throughout the album you hear the distinctive Metheny phrasing, the voice of his guitar so familiar to those who, like me, have listened to him for the last 20-odd years. However, something is slightly different on this particular recording. It's as if Metheny has gone back 40 or 50 years in time to when small jazz ensembles were the norm. If you close your eyes you can almost picture the trio in a small, smoky, jazz club, playing to a small audience, working off each other and loving every minute of it. There have been other Metheny albums that have traced a more classical jazz route -- 1986's "Song X" and 84's "Rejoicing" come immediately to mind -- but none with the passion or nostalgia for the past as it's been captured on Trio. Starting with "(Go) Get It," Trio starts to swing right out of the gate. Moving effortlessly into a sultry version of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," the album immediately finds its groove and unfailingly holds on to it throughout the entire album. "Just Like The Day," "We Had A Sister" and "Travels" are such typically Metheny-sounding compositions that you almost wonder what they are doing among the rest of these almost purposely classical jazzy compositions, but there they are and they fit in so well. Sounding positively elegant, the tight trio of players also do superb justice to the Strouse and Adams standard "A Lot Of Livin' To Do." It is also good to hear that after 22 years "Lone Jack," a Metheny/Mays composition that originally appeared on Pat Metheny Group (1978), and a favorite album of mine, has resurfaced. The new version, while not as lushly produced and with far less instrumentation than the original, manages to sound even fuller and more complete and has lost not a bit of its verve. If Trio lacks one thing, it's liner notes. For those of us who in the past have enjoyed the sometimes eclectic internals of Metheny's liner notes -- who didn't have fun deciphering the code in Imaginary Day -- Trio is spartan, to say the least. But this is a minor grouse. After all, it's the music and not the goodies you get with the album that keep you listening time after time. And I predict that time and time again is when you'll be coming back to this album. In spite of the incredible two days it took to record the 11 songs, Trio is wonderfully spontaneous yet at the same time taut and well produced. A fabulous album. | March 2000 David Middleton is the art director of Blue Coupe magazine.	Trio is a sharp and tightly produced recording with lots of spontaneity in the playing. And despite the fact that Metheny is not surrounded by the familiar rich overdubs and electronic soundscapes that are typical of most of his albums, Trio sounds full and rich and is saturated with some of the finest playing I've heard from Metheny.