Lyle Lovett

What do you suppose would happen if we took the time to recognize the accomplishments of our beloved American musicians, their enormous talent while they were still at the height of their careers? Let’s come out and say it: Lyle Lovett is one of the all-time great American singer/songwriters and should be recognized as such. His voice is unique, but his antecedents are recognizable. In his work two roads come together, ­the trail blazed by the great Texas storytellers of whom Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark are the best known, and the crooked highway navigated by sophisticated wise-asses such as Randy Newman and Tom Waits. Lovett’s first gift was to combine these two potent strands of musical DNA into a new genome able to generate songs as brilliant and double-sided as “If I Had A Boat,” “God Will,” “If I Were the Man You Wanted,” “Family Reserve” and “Her First Mistake.” That would be plenty for any composer to base a career on, but Lovett was also capable of both flat-out humor (“That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas”), “Here I am,” ”Church”) and heartbreakers that were poignant without ever descending into sentimentality (“She’s Already Made Up Her Mind,” “Nobody Knows Me,” “The Road To Ensenada”). What emerged was a picture of a smart and complicated man, whose good humor and generosity of spirit were holding back a darker character. Out of such tensions, many artists are born.

Lovett also has a gift for big band arrangements that has no precedent among contemporary singer/songwriters, made all the more potent because of its somewhat surprising use. He also displays a literary talent that has made him part of the tradition of American ironists. This is probably the aspect of Lovett that interested director Robert Altman, who cast him in four films (“The Player,” “Short Cuts,” “Pret-a-Porter,” “Cookie’s Fortune”) and had him score a fifth (“Dr. T and the Women”)

While music should be and is open for interpretation by the listener, Lovett’s new album, IT’S NOT BIG IT’S LARGE, suggests notions of mortality, loss and the fluidity of time. In many of the songs, the past intrudes on the present and the narrator finds strength to deal with the travails of today by putting them into historical perspective. That sounds like heavy-going, but its Lovett’s gift to make the deep thoughts slide down like honey.

Lyle Lovett does a lot of things very well, but one of his most important talents is his ability to make us aware of how much the past lives in us and how what we do today shapes how we will consider our lives later. The people in old songs, old photographs and even old TV shows were once just as alive and full of feelings as we are now. They were what we are; we will someday be as they are. That can be an intimidating thought, but Lovett also offers us consolation; when we sing their songs, when we remember them, they are alive again.