Lyle Lovett's latest: A force of nature
Lyle Lovett has long come across as the nice guy who finished last.
He's the dude who, against all odds, got the beautiful girl, then promptly lost her to some better-looking, wealthier other man. So Lovett sighs, sucks it up, writes some songs about it and moves on down the line.
This character looms large in all of Lovett's genre-bending music, most clearly when he's ripping your heart out with a wryly observed ballad — say, "The Road to Ensenada," a song of such startling world-weariness as to suggest the narrator wouldn't settle for anything less than bitter disappointment as his lot in life.
Most impressively, Lovett is able to summon this air even when he's covering the work of other songwriters, as he did to such stirring effect with his 1998 all-covers album "Step Inside This House." The new "Natural Forces," out today, splits the difference between that earlier record, and the country-jazz-swing-pop stylings of full-on Lovett masterpieces in the mode of 1992's "Joshua Judges Ruth."
Lovett wrote or co-wrote five of the album's 11 tracks; the rest are interpretations of the work of several of his favorite Texas-based songwriters, among them Eric Taylor, Vince Bell and the late, great Townes Van Zandt.
As it turns out, the record, as much as it is a tribute to some oft-overlooked songwriters, is all about Lovett. His beautifully reedy voice, penchant for nimbly turned phrases, and ability to marry Western swing to straight country and laid-back folk music imbue all of these songs with a personality that is wholly Lovett's own.
Like all of his best song collections, "Natural Forces" splits the difference between literate humor and finely detailed sorrow. The former seems to be included in hopes of alleviating the dark clouds summoned by the latter, and as ever, it works here. Musically and lyrically, the songs conjure images of dusty roads cutting across dry, flat plains, the skies gray, clouds heavy, portending rain that will never come. Once in a while, the generally bummed-out characters take a break from the blues to get drunk, dance and giggle.
The title song, a Lovett composition, opens the proceedings and sets the scene, one where restless motion is the order of the day. "We loaded up in Buffalo/Took 90-South to Ohio/On 80-West I'm 'Frisco bound/And when I get there, I'll turn back around," sings Lovett, as an elegant wash of piano, steel guitar and fiddle floats above him. The mood breaks quickly with "Farmer Brown/Chicken Reel," a hyper swing chart offering a courteous tip of the hat to Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, before devolving into an extended double entendre riff on masturbation. (Seriously.) It's hilarious, but it's also an able showcase for Lovett's Large Band's musical athleticism. Yes, these guys can play.
"Pantry" is upbeat, too, and again, Lovett is in his witty wordplay mode, a delineation of food items serving as a metaphor for sex. (He does include the lyric "Keep it in your pantry." Ouch.) Finally, we get to the bittersweet stuff. "Empty Blue Shoes" is classic Lovett windswept balladry, a real weeper with a lilting melody and pedal steel guitars vying with elegiac fiddle to see who can drop a tear in their beer first. (The pedal steel wins, it seems.)
The covers are stately, particularly Lovett's take on Eric Taylor's ode to the vanishing landscape, "Whooping Crane," whose melody isn't so much sung as it is cried. Lovett is on solid ground here, fully able to make the song his own. He does aching loss quite well, thank you.
David Ball's "Don't You Think I Feel It Too" is delivered as a slow country waltz, and is the setting for one of the several erudite musical statements scattered throughout the album by fiddle player Stuart Duncan. Vince Bell's "Sun and Moon and Stars" is an ode to resilience, and Ñ wait for it Ñ Lovett underscores the sadness at the song's heart with his delivery, ably assisted by pianist Matt Rollings' shimmering fills.
It's interesting that, by the time Lovett gets to one of finest purveyors of heartbreak-in-song, Townes Van Zandt, he chooses "Loretta," which is one of Van Zandt's more jubilant songs. Lovett delivers the song as a piano-led ballad, but for once, his character seems to have taken a brief sojourn from the beckoning road Ñ there is something resembling peace in the voice.
Like every Lyle Lovett album, "Natural Forces" is beautifully produced and impeccably performed. Is it too perfect? One could make the argument, perhaps, that Lovett and Co. have gotten so good at doing this that they're on auto-pilot by this point. But why bother? Much better to just let the music work its abundant magic on you.
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