Weather Report includes: Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Miroslav Vitous, Dom Um Romao, Eric Gravatt, Maruga, Andrew White III, Herschel Dwellingham.
Includes liner notes by John Ephland.
Weather Report's third album is a clearly defined move into Latin and Brazilian motifs, wah-wah guitar, and synthesizer funk. Mainmen Zawinul and Shorter recruited new percussionists for SWEETNIGHTER, whose well-traveled talents helped to augment the band's already beefy sound. Compositionally, Weather Report was never tighter.
There's a tense wait for the suppressed funk of "Boogie Woogie Waltz" to finally take off, but when it does, with Vitous' bass a fault line of deep groove, Zawinul's electronics mapping out the terrain, and Shorter's sax spewing torrents of hellfire, the release is breathtaking. The climax here is an ecstatic rush of blitzkrieg re-bop. "125th Street Congress" could be Miles Davis' ON THE CORNER part two, sly funk smeared across the greasy keys of Zawinul's synthesizers and Shorter's horns. Go gentle into this SWEETNIGHTER--you won't want to come down when it's all over.