Ben’s 500 Album Countdown: #81 Lyle Lovett – Pontiac

by bandbandp83

Lyle Lovett
Pontiac
MCA/Curb
Recorded: April 1987 in Nashville, Tennessee
Released: Some time in the fall of 1987
Run Time: 35:07
Does Ben Own This Record?: No.

History of the Album

After his very lauded debut in 1986, Lovett returned to the studio in what he called a 30-day straight session of recording in April 1987. The songs on the album were largely composed in the years prior to his recording career success, , such as “If I Had A Boat,” which was written a decade earlier when he was 20. Others, such as “L.A. County” and the title track were freshly written for this record, his first to actually be recorded in Nashville. While his first album was labeled idiosyncratic country by most of the critics in Nashville, he was largely praised for being one of the best and most genuine songwriters in country music. Lovett was part of an emerging class of artists outside the boundaries of Nashville but deeply rooted in the things that had made traditional country a common fabric of Americana. Lovett’s second offering took all the great things from his first album and built upon them, while also broadening the landscape. The bluesy “She’s No Lady” and the horns and backing vocal arrangements would be a sign of things to come. Many of the players from the first record returned for the second, including Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Ray Herndon, and Francine Reed. Producer Tony Brown would once again helm the chair.

Pontiac reached number 12 on Billboard’s chart for Top Country Albums, and 117 in the Billboard Hot 200 in 1988. Pontiac was ranked as 201 in the list of the “500 Best Albums of All-Time” by the German edition of Rolling Stone in 2004 and an Italian magazine would go on to name it as one of the Top Albums of the 1980s. The album is also one of 300 listed in the book, 50 Years of Great Recordings and appears as number 33 the Village Voice’s list of top albums for 1988.

For the most part, the record would be one of his final “solo” albums for awhile before he would dub “His Large Band” with the next release in 1989. The band had largely been in place in pieces since his debut in 1986, but became recognized as a whole unit by the next album. Pontiac would be the demonstration of an artist on the verge of meeting large success, despite the album’s solid repertoire from start to finish. Many say that Lovett’s first two albums are some of his best, setting the table for the rest of his 30+ year career as a singer-songwriter icon in Americana.

Ben’s Review

Idiosyncratic. Strange. Fun. Solid Songwriting. Great instrumentalists. These pretty much characterize Lyle Lovett’s records, even if by the later releases they had grown somewhat formulaic. You know what you’re going to get when it has his name on it. Like his debut release, this is probably my second release of his that I can listen to at any time. I think the songwriting is more solid than the rest, and his future releases don’t seem to be caught in a trope. He hadn’t become a caricature in pop culture yet with his acting performances or his marriage to Julia Roberts. Lovett’s no great singer, so I have to be in the right mood to listen to him. However, for someone venturing down the road of great singer-songwriters of the past 40 years (God, 1980 is 40 years old now!), Lovett is a great place to start for anyone. He was also an integral part of a great crop of artists that hovered about Nashville and Austin at the time. Dwight Yoakum, Roseanne Cash, Keith Whitley, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, John Hiatt, the late Chris LeDoux, the recently departed KT Oslin, Reba McIntire, George Strait was always around, kd lang, and Marty Stuart was beginning to make rumblings. Nashville was taking risks on artists that lived on the outskirts a bit more, paving the way for a larger tent on the Billboard Country Charts and the Academy of Country Music Awards. The “crossroads” artists wouldn’t last too long, though as the next crop of country stars in the 90s were neo-traditionalist hitmakers with just a few who would blend sounds of other genres like Lovett and his ilk continued to do through the next decade. Pontiac really cements for me that Lovett was as much a writer than anything, especially with the tunes “If I Had A Boat” and the forlorn title track and “Simple Song.” Lovett also doesn’t take himself too seriously either, riffing on his looks in “She’s Hot to Go,” a true Western swinger. For anyone wanting to get into or understand the appeal of Lyle Lovett, go into this album – but don’t think of him as a country artist, or jazz, or whatever box people have told you to put him in. Just look at it under the wide tent of Americana – where many great artists have always dared tread. Lovett’s happily lived under that tent for as long as I have been alive. It’s probably his most quintessential album in his catalog next to the follow up or its predecessor.