Guitarists Pat Metheny and John Scofield are both originally from the Midwest and both eventually ended up at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. Maybe something about their shared heritage drew them together for this project – it certainly wasn’t a shared approach to their instrument. Metheny built his career on an odd combination of sweet and tuneful jazz fusion and highly adventurous noise, whereas Scofield has pretty consistently explored the fuzzy boundaries between jazz, funk, and soul. Metheny’s signature tone (when he isn’t skronking out) is soft and feathery; Scofield’s is chorused and slightly distorted. But despite their stylistic differences, they come together beautifully on this quartet date, which also features bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bill Stewart. What’s fun is that they don’t really try to fuse their styles – instead they kind of alternate between them, and sound like they’re having a complete blast in doing so. Consider, for example, the jaunty funk intro to “The Red One,” and how it suddenly explodes into rockish fusion. Or the very Metheny-esque pastoralism of “Message to My Friend,” which segues into the very Scofield-y angular soul-jazz of “No Way Jose.” I Can See Your House from Here is an exhilarating and joyful listen from two of the towering giants of contemporary jazz guitar.

– Rick Anderson