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I know I'll be slated for saying this, and I'll never again receive any free concert posters from Ted Kurland Associates, but this album is sheer confectionery -- another concoction of Metheny sweetmeats with no soul. For those of us who've been following the Metheny-Mays combo since the 1970s, it is depressing that they have come up with something that is better labelled as '70s progressive rock' than 'jazz'-anything. This has as many pointless changes of key, pace and tone as anything put out by Yes, Gentle Giant or Hatfield and the North. This is Metheny's 'Topographic Oceans', not his 'Kind of Blue'. There comes a point in the life of many a successful musician where family becomes more important than the music. Suddenly you find you're living half a continent away from your main collaborator and, despite the connectivity of the Internet, you've lost that creative spark. Making music becomes a job rather than the passionate fulfilment of a dream. The more I think about, the more I feel this happened for Metheny in the late 1980s, around the time he switched from ECM to Geffen. Certainly the switch from Geffen to Nonesuch seems to have achieved no change in direction. (They're both Warner subsidiaries, aren't they?) Like most of the Geffen albums, THE WAY UP (68:10) contains a bit of something for everyone. Even the cover design is the multi-coloured pot-pourri that characterised the Geffen years. (With ECM, you tend to get a much more focussed album cover, with a harsh Nordic simplicity. Some would say the 'chamber-jazz' recording style of ECM is also preferable to this heavily layered symphony.) I am part of the loyal fan base, in that I dutifully buy the albums and go to the concerts when they visit our area. But I just feel the guys could achieve so much more -- possibly by making it much simpler. Perhaps it's time for another Metheny-Mays duo album.