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.On his sophomore effort for Lost Highway (and first release in four years), Lyle Lovett tests the label's free-spirited reputation with an eclectic slate of songs that range from fervent country swing through gospel-blues, though the core here finds the Texas singer-songwriter in a decidedly quiet, introspective mood. Anchored by a vibrant, swinging take on Lester Young's "Tickle Toe," his big band's first sprawling instrumental workout in many a year, Lovett quickly segues into the intriguing gospel-blues of the "I Will Rise Up/Ain't No More Cane" medley before shrewdly contemplating the backside of life and fame's inevitable grade on "All Downhill from Here" and the weary "This Traveling Around." The plaintive grace of "Don't Cry a Tear" and "The Alley Song" hauntingly blurs genre boundaries, while "South Texas Girl" does a little quiet Tex-Mex retrenchment. Lovett celebrates his 50th year here with a muse that's ever restless, yet still spry enough to relish the simple, varied joys of the buoyant "Up in Indiana" (also featured in a stripped-down acoustic version), the bluesy "No Big Deal," and the gospel-meets-carnal playfulness of "Make It Happy" before another fervent, elegiac version of "Ain't No More Cane" brings the album full-circle. --Jerry McCulley
