Sunday, November 15, 2009
A+E, Music, Reviews

Lyle Lovett

“NATURAL FORCES”  (LOST HIGHWAY)

When most singer-songwriters run into writer’s block, they typically tough it out, releasing live albums, soundtracks or greatest-hits compilations while waiting for that elusive muse to reappear. Lyle Lovett has been guilty of all of the above, but has found a way around the process by recording others’ songs in his own distinctive manner.

    This is the second of those projects—the first was 1998’s “Step Inside This House”—wherein most of the tunes are contributed by other Texas songwriters. Which means it’s another tasty, impeccably played menu of folk, jazzy pop and country that cross-pollinates genres with the ease of someone who has been doing so throughout his career.

    Lovett sticks with longtime producer Billy Williams and the core of his Large Band, saving the horns and background vocalists—specifically Atlanta’s Francine Reed—for the accompanying tour. He skews to his introspective side on ballads by Eric Taylor, Don Sanders, David Ball and Vince Bell that dominate the proceedings. In this rather obscure company, Townes Van Zandt seems like a superstar, and Lovett digs into his catalog for the lovely gem “Loretta.” 

    A handful of originals pepper the track list, raising the tempos and temperature with Lovett’s jazzier and bluegrass sides (“Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel”). That’s especially true of “It’s Rock ’n’ Roll,” a two-part collaboration with Robert Earl Keen that examines the titular lifestyle with tenderness and wry humor as its slow, spoken-word opening morphs into the album’s most rollicking and unexpectedly raucous performance. 3 STARS—Hal Horowitz