photo provided by Sherri Rase
Highway Rider CD cover
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Brad Mehldau's lastest release-"Highway Rider"-is a two-disc set that could easily be the only disc you take on a cross-country drive. Beginning with "John Boy" and "Don't Be Sad," you start to see that the journey that we're on is one of thought, and that the mind's legs come to walk a bit faster, stride lengthening as Mehldau's arrangements and full orchestra carry us through "At the Toll Booth" and the title song itself.

The album is about doing and feeling and contemplation. It is a quest we're on, even if we are not aware of what we seek. Disc two, however, helps bring our goal more firmly into focus. Disc one ends with "Now You Must Climb Alone" and "Walking the Peak," but Disc two begins with "We'll Cross the River Together." Whether it's the spine of the Rockies, or a relationship shoal, it appears we have come through it. There is the sense of bitterness and bittersweet and the album culminates in the companion pieces "Always Departing" and "Always Returning." Mehldau's piano is, at times, pensive and, at other times, moving. He is stretching the sense of what is right musically by changing the shape of the space where the sounds live. Not a distortion per se, but, rather, a different way of viewing the shape of the sound.

If you have been hiking, if you have experienced the way that nature takes sounds and makes music in ways that do not reflect well-ordered square rooms, then this may be a pleasing journey for you to take. You get a sense early on of what the album will be like when looking at the cover. It's a photograph, in predominantly naturally neutral colors, of a drive-in movie screen. This blank canvas is where Mehldau works and his colors are something to hear.

You can get "Highway Rider" from Nonesuch Records and your favorite CD providers online and in retail stores.