Lyle Lovett
Pontiac

THE REVIEW

For an artist, becoming famous just for the woman you married is tough.

Lyle Lovett is a middle-aged man, a real cowboy, to be precise, with a face sharp as a stone and an oblique gaze. He doesn't roam the prairies lassoing cattle on top of fly-ridden colts... he can be called a cowboy because he wears a wide-brimmed hat, snakeskin boots, is Texan, and, above all, composes records that "seem" country. Hence the cowboy label. The actress who made him famous to a wide audience was Julia Roberts.

Our cowboy, also acting (in films directed by Altman!) meets the beautiful tall woman in that environment. He marries and divorces in two years. A flash that takes him to the glossy covers worldwide, then... darkness again. But remove from your head the actress's wide-toothed smile, our guy is one of the great (unknown) figures of American popular music. He has composed three or four masterpieces. 'Pontiac', from 1987, is one. In the '80s, prompted by one of those alt-rock magazines circulating in the Italian scene, I bought this somber record while everyone else was listening to Dire Straits. And that record, placed on the turntable, floored me.

Lovett's sounds undeniably originate from American country, from the homely moods of U.S. provinces, but that is just the beginning. The roots. Rather, the humus that nourishes them. As the songs unfold, the first sensation is one of class, taste, and sophistication absolutely non-existent and unusual among the current "saleable cowboys" across the ocean, like Garth Brooks, for example. Here we are, with Lovett, in a glossy, delightful territory, suspended in time, never banal, almost classic. Light and joyful episodes alternate with heart-wrenching songs. Songs that make it really hard not to let oneself be "taken away". Lovett is a songwriter who seems from another time.

Swing, jazz, and gospel choirs color and flavor his songs. "If I Have A Boat" is a simple nursery rhyme painted with a folk warm-accented acoustic guitar that talks about a boat, the ocean, and a pony to place inside to then sail away. The added value of the song is Lyle's voice, deep, warm, "softest". "Walk Through The Bottomland," accompanied by Emmylou Harris's singing, is a story of impossible love for a "cowman" whom fate has reserved a solitary destiny. Alone, without a woman, in a red desert. There's only a weeping steel guitar as a counterpoint. "M.o.n.e.y.," a danceable blues allowing crooner Lyle to have fun and entertain. But the gems of this LP (I like to remember it this way) are "Black And Blue," a fabulous ballad that seems to come out of some post-war Big Band, a slow, sinuous, and enveloping rhythm. It grabs you and doesn't let go. Liquid notes of piano and sax warm up the atmosphere. You get projected inside a saloon, and a beautiful woman looks at you, smiles mischievously, and you know she will be yours. It's the excitement of a dance evening.

And finally, the emotional climax, the two songs that, one after the other, leave you breathless, are "Simple Song" and "Pontiac." The first, reminiscent for the atmosphere of Springsteen's Point Blank, just heart-rending, aching piano with a violin in the background drawing an arabesque. A moving song, which remains, which gets stuck, which evokes. The love lost forever that annihilates you and nothing and no one to save you. The following "Pontiac," harsh, tough, cutting, again piano and violin and a legendary voice, with one of my favorite lyrics ever. Here's my personal translation and interpretation:

"Every evening I park my Pontiac down the hill, with a cigarette in my mouth and a coke. What all the neighbors see is a handsome old man. And there's a girl across the street, sitting on her porch swinging on a swing. She never realized what I wanted to convey with my gaze. When, during World War II, I killed twenty German boys with my bare hands. And... the woman waiting for me at home: she never stops talking, talking... but she never actually says anything, she just talks. And I could leave her there, still and silent. After the sun sets. And I smoke this cigarette."

A kick in the butt to all the clownish stereotypes about cowboys.