Pat Metheny - Side-Eye III+ [2LP]

Side-Eye III+ finds Pat Metheny back in the studio with the young players who fuel his Side-Eye project, a 2026 double LP that turns that rolling experiment into a full-scale statement.

Metheny started Side-Eye as a way to work with emerging musicians, treating it as a live laboratory where new compositions and reshaped favorites could develop night after night. Its first document, the live Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV), showed how much fire the format could generate. This studio set, the first release on his own Uniquity Music imprint, centers on a core trio with keyboardist Chris Fishman and drummer Joe Dyson, and the extra room of the studio lets the writing expand in every direction.

Melody is the anchor throughout. From the opener In On It through Make a New World and Our Old Street to the closing So Far, So Good, the trio states each theme clearly and then stretches it, with Fishman supplying harmonic momentum and Dyson keeping the pulse loose but insistent. Metheny's guitar tone is instantly recognizable from the first phrase, riding over everything with that familiar singing warmth.

Spread across two LPs, these long-form pieces have space to unfold at their own pace. It's a generous, forward-looking record from a guitarist still chasing new sounds, and still bringing the next generation along with him.