The message from the evening
news suggests people should stay close to home, so it’s fitting that this next
album is inspired by someone’s home state.
Disc 1350 is…Step
Inside This House
Artist:
Lyle Lovett
Year of Release: 1998
What’s up with the
Cover?
An out-of-focus Lyle and an in-focus door. Is he stepping inside this
house, or is he inviting us to step inside this house? I think the
latter.
On a side not cover-related note, this album is one of those giant
two-disc sets they used to sell in the late nineties at the height of CD
popularity. Nowadays a two-disc set comes in a small flap of cardboard, but
back in 1998 it came in this giant brick of a case, with covers that opened on
both ends, weighty booklets and a spine so thick you’d think it was a Tolstoy novel.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it’s just a lot of unnecessarily
wasted space on my packed shelves.
How I Came to Know
It: This album escaped my attention
when it came out, but a few years later I saw a used copy for sale at one of my
local record stores and snapped it up, hoping for the best.
How It Stacks Up: I have 11 Lyle Lovett
albums. They’re all good, and competition is fierce. I’ll put “Step Inside This
House” at a respectable #7.
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
As I mentioned in the teaser, “Step Inside
This House” is Lyle Lovett’s love letter to his home state of Texas. Lovett
wrote none of these songs, instead curating them from some of his favourite Texan
songwriters. Lovett has a lot of favourites, and with many he can’t just pick one
song. The result is like a bouquet of a couple dozen roses; it’s a massive
expression of love, but it is hard to know what to do with it all when you get
it home.
Stylistically, Lovett is his usual unique
blend of country crooner, blues and a hint of lounge singer. His vocals are
some of the most underrated in music. He’s got an ability to hit deep emotion,
but also express a sardonic wit within the same song. It’s like he’s got a tear
in one eye, and he’s winking at you with the other, and both emotions are real.
Armed with some of the Lone Star State’s best
talents (many of them previously unknown to me) Lovett has a lot to work with,
and he doesn’t let the material down. If anything, the gravitas of his mission
to pay homage to these artists grounds him more than usual.
Over two albums, Lovett covers 21 songs, which
is about a third too many. 14 would have been fine. Part of this is that Lovett
really likes Walter Hyatt, Steven Fromholz and Townes Van Zandt,
covering each of them four times. It’s fair to say I don’t love Hyatt and
Fromholz the way Lovett does. When I was picking my favourite tracks, Fromholz
appears once (with the middle part of the Texas Trilogy) and Hyatt not at all.
I didn’t hate their songs, but they didn’t pull my heart strings.
Fortunately, Townes Van Zandt was there to
make that happen and then some. Lovett has covered Van Zandt plenty of times
over the years, but some of these selections are matches made in heaven. This is
particularly true for “Flyin’ Shoes” where the light lilt of Townes’
melody is a perfect match for the airy croon of Lyle’s vocals. He also lends “Highway
Kind” the kind of haunt it needs. As for “If I Needed You,” it is
just one of those perfect songs that is hard to screw up. Lyle does not.
I expected to like the Townes songs, and I did.
Seeing those titles on the back of the album probably encouraged me to buy it
in the first place. However, once I stepped inside Mr. Lovett’s Texas home, I
found a whole lot of other hidden gems.
Michael Martin Murphy and Boomer Castleman’s “West
Texas Highway” is the perfect combination of country swing and twist of
phrase to suit Lovett’s style. In the song, Lovett’s narrator picks up a
hitchhiker with a lot less money than him, but a lot more adventure. As he lets
him out at his destination, he opines:
“But I’m still wishing
To this very day
That he had my clothes
And my big Chevrolet
And it was me going to Haskell
With a woman down in Abilene.”
The album ends with the traditional track, “Texas
River Song.” It is a love song for the state’s rivers, save one – the Brazos
– where the narrator’s lover once abandoned him. There’s no writing credit for
this one, but with lines like this…
“Now the fair Angelina
Runs glossy and gliding
The crooked Colorado
Runs weaving and winding
The slow San Antonio
Courses the plains
But I never will walk
By the Brazos again.”
…I throw a little of my love across the ages
to whoever was responsible. He or she may be forgotten, but they live forever
every time someone shares this tune.
Lyle shares a lot of great tunes on this
record, and if there were just a few less of them this record would easily be 4
stars. In the end though, there is just too much love in the room to take it
all in, and too many roses to fully appreciate each individual flower.
Best tracks: Step Inside This House, I’ve Had Enough, Ballad of
the Snow Leopard and the Tanqueray Cowboy, West Texas Highway, Texas Trilogy:
Train Ride, Flyin’ Shoes, Highway Kind, If I Needed You, Texas River Song
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