Pat Metheny ONE QUIET NIGHT (WARNER BROS.)

Over the course of his career, jazz-guitar god Pat Metheny has alternated between his Pat Metheny Group and more traditional trios, and though the latter have shown off his ability to function in a "pure" jazz context, the most recent PMG discs have suffered from an anticlimactic jazz-pop sameness. One Quiet Night is a satisfying departure, a solo acoustic-guitar album recorded in one session. The session suffers from some unfortunate new-age trappings — the reverb on these tracks oozes Windham Hill — but the low-end tuning of Metheny’s new baritone guitar mimics the presence of a bass, and that creates an interesting wrinkle in the music’s texture.

Repeated listenings reveal Metheny’s personality in the details, as he punctuates the calm, folk-like surfaces with moody dissonance and harmonic shifts, or follows an idea into new terrain. In the title track, a recurring light, pinging, choric high note becomes more pronounced; by the end, it’s like a character who’s been transformed in the course of the song’s narrative. Metheny works similar surprises with Night’s cover choices, Jesse Harris’s Norah Jones hit "Don’t Know Why" and the Pacemakers’ "Ferry ’Cross the Mersey." "Over on 4th Street" ups the tempo with a folk-tunefulness that cries out for lyrics, and "Song for the Boys" builds drama with its propulsive triple meter.