(2022) Lyle Lovett - 12th of June  


Review:
Lyle Lovett is another Texan who grew up listening to music in that eclectic way but more so than perhaps anyone else, Lovett brings this level of diversity to his music. Who else would open an album with a Horace Silver tune, and a couple of tunes associated with Nat King Cole adjacent to singer-songwriter fare and other country-style tunes that feature some of Nashville’s best players such as Paul Franklin, Stuart Duncan, and Sam Bush? Artists aren’t supposed to do this in the genre-confining obsessed formatting of today, but Lovett not only does it, but as he so often has, he makes this sonic mix seem natural. Returning with his first album in over decade, Lovett and His Large Band give us 12th of June, his debut on Verve. Yes, it begins with the swing of Horace Silver’s “Cookin’ at the Continental” but then quickly segues to a trademark quirky tune “Pants is Overrated.” Here’s one of the verses – “My people from across the pong/They hail from Scotland and beyond/Where sheep make wool for socks and shoes/And grown men run around in skirts…Pants is overrated.” In addition to his 13-piece Large Band, the tune features a choir of nine background vocalists and a string quartet. As the old saying goes, “Everything’s bigger and better in Texas.” From there Lovett engages in playful duets with the great Francine Reed on the familiar Nat King Cole associated “Straighten Up and Fly Right” and “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You” as well as another classic, David Frishberg’s tantalizing “Peel Me a Grape.” At that point, the album’s second half then features six consecutive Lovett originals. Lovett makes no apologies for such a seemingly contradictory sequencing – “This album reflects the music I grew up around. My music is like me. I live on land that belonged to my grandfather. I live next door to my mother. I think the music reflects where I’m from and who I am.” The hymn-like country waltz “Her Loving Me” is an unabashed ode to his wife, dubbed as “Queen of Know.” Franklin’s pedal steel cuts right to the bone in his solo mid-song with strong accompaniment from the band, especially pianist Jim Cox. It’s classic Lovett, musically evoking his earlier material like “Walk Through the Bottom Land.” The title track follows, in essence, a piano ballad imbued by Duncan’s yearning fiddle, Lovett espouses love for his wife and twin children in his new role as a parent but with a curveball too as he contemplates his own mortality in the closing verses, “I will love you three forever/Though I fly beyond this life.” Just as cynical types will begin to think that Lovett may be getting too sappy, he brings one of his signature witty tunes with “Pig Meat Man.” It’s tempting to think this is of the double entendre mode of Bessie Smith tunes like “Kitchen Man” but instead Lovett claims this stomping blues tune is nothing more than his love for pork – bacon, and sausage. The punchy horns shine here both in unison and solo spots as Cox’s sturdy B3 immensely fills the little remaining space. “The Mocking Ones” is an elegiac country ballad colored by pedal steel, fiddle, and mandolin as Lovett recalls an old love affair or friendship that never quite worked out, paying it off in the lines – “To wait, forget and still remember some/To hold our heads above the laughing tongues/Falling from faces of the mocking ones.” Cox delivers an elegant piano intro to the slow-building waltz “Are We Dancing” featuring stunning contributions from the string quartet while the closer “On a Winter’s Morning” makes yet another left turn as Cox begins in a piano barrelhouse mode with a tune that unfolds into a 30’s-like vaudeville jazz with clarinet and trombone in the fading coda. There may not be any other artist who can go in so many different directions while making us laugh, cry, and dance. There’s much to savor in these eleven tunes. The ten-year hiatus hasn’t diminished Lovett’s strength as a songwriter or musical programmer one bit.


         


Track List:
01 - Cookin' at the Continental
02 - Pants Is Overrated
03 - Straighten Up and Fly Right
04 - Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You
05 - Peel Me a Grape
06 - Her Loving Man
07 - 12th of June
08 - Pig Meat Man
09 - The Mocking Ones
10 - Are We Dancing
11 - On a Winter's Morning
01 - Cookin' at the Continental


Media Report:
Genre: country, singer-songwriter
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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