This album eventually arrived after having drip fed a couple of tracks to tantalise the long term fans. As one of those I was a little sceptical about what I was hearing, was this going to be the album that the fans had been waiting for for such a long time, what was he going to sound like without Lyle Mays, where was he going to take this new set of musicians. On first listening I was a little underwhelmed, not sure what was happening, where the album was going. But I was willing to try and give it more time, and I have to say that it is a grower, there are things going on in the music which take some exploring, some underlying themes which are so much more subtle than we have become accustomed to with the previous Pat Metheny Group outings. In fact where it differs most from those, is in the fact that it is played very much as a quartet, with each player contributing equally to the whole, and while Pat's playing is sublime, it is mixed so well that it sits in with the other musicians as an equal part rather than as a lead. This may be upsetting for some who want more of a focal point, but in my view he has taken the decision to find a way of playing that is about the ensemble, each participant contributing to the whole, not by soloing at the front of the stage, but by playing their best in the mix, and allowing the music to take centre stage. This is Metheny finding a new way of playing with these musicians on a record, and the fact that they have been playing live for so long suggestst that he has found a camaraderie that allows all of them to support and defer to each other in order to present a cohesive whole.