We were lucky to see Lyle Lovett at all, since he was badly mauled by a bull earlier this year and is still recovering from having his leg broken in 16 places. But as soon as he took the stage with his seven-piece band, tucked tidily into a dark suit and grey shirt, he was clearly the same ol' Lyle - droll, in control and mildly eccentric.
The leg-trampling incident hasn't dimmed Lovett's enthusiasm for his native Texas, where much of his time is spent running his grandfather's farm near Houston. He established some geographical bearings with a speedy That's Right, You're Not from Texas ("but Texas wants you anyway") and Steve Earle's San Antonio Girl. There were also some selections from his fine double album, Step Inside This House, which comprises songs by his favourite Texan songwriters. The title track is by Lovett's mentor, Guy Clark, and his performance of it here was a little masterpiece of evocative restraint. The band also had plenty of fun with Steven Fromholz's Bears ("Meet a bear and take him out to lunch with you," if you will), although the same writer's Texas Trilogy was a sprawling, overwrought affair and rather too much of a good thing.
While Lovett's lack of overbearing superstar attitude is one of his more endearing qualities, it is not necessarily ideal for a bandleader. At the Barbican he was too keen to indulge the skills of his hired hands, and seemed particularly eager to show us how marvellous he thinks mandolin player Sam Bush is. Bush, who bears a disconcerting resemblance to prog-rock veteran Jeff Lynne, was given a lot of space for solos and even got to sing lead on one song. Unfortunately, it was too long, not very good and not sung particularly well either. You Can't Resist It, which began life as an unassuming but effective rock song, has not survived the transition to the Lovett septet, and any lingering resemblance to its former self was obliterated by a pointless free-form cello solo by John Hagen.
The band were far more effective in the tightly arranged western swing of Give Back My Heart and a Celtic version of Don't Let Your Deal Go Down. The tune If I Had a Boat was the perfect vehicle for the cracked, yearning quality of Lovett's voice. But before he encored with Townes Van Zandt's White Freightliner, maybe somebody should have warned him that Gillian Welch played it last Friday. Then he could have played Friend of the Devil instead.
