Lyle Lovett: Step Inside This House

It's nice to see that Lyle Lovett has the clout to release an elaborately packaged, two-disc collection of little-known country songs by his favorite Texas songwriters. It's even nicer to see folks like Guy Clark, Walter Hyatt, and the late Townes Van Zandt score some attention and royalties. Nicest of all is that Step Inside This House is a consistently pleasant, mostly acoustic, likable 21-song collection that never comes close to wearing thin despite an 80-minute running time. If anything, it's a little frustrating to have to pay for two discs when, with a minute or two shaved off, everything would fit on one. There's a sweet, knockabout charm to Hyatt's brisk "Teach Me About Love" and gently jazzy "Babes In The Woods"; Van Zandt's gorgeous "Highway Kind" and "If I Needed You"; "More Pretty Girls Than One," a traditional song with Alison Krauss singing backup; and, well, just about everything else here. Because it's a collection of covers, the 21 tracks don't hold together thematically the way a Lovett masterpiece (say, Joshua Judges Ruth) would. But, like virtually all of the singer's albums, Step Inside This House benefits from impeccable arrangements and Lovett's uncanny vocals, which somehow sound warm and detached at the same time. It's far from essential, but that's only when you compare it to its stunning predecessors.