Mark Deming, All Music Guide

While Lyle Lovett's self-titled debut album made it clear he was one the most gifted and idiosyncratic talents to emerge in country music in the 1980s, his follow-up, 1987's Pontiac, took the strengths of his first disc and refined them, and the result was a set whose sound and feel more accurately reflected Lovett's musical personality. While much of Pontiac favors the country side of Lovett's musical personality, the bouncy swing of "Give Back My Heart" and the weepy stroll of "Walk Through the Bottomland" have a lighter touch that suits them noticeably better than the stiffer production and arrangements of the first album, while the breezy snap of "L.A. County" serves as a perfect contrast to the tune's violent dénouement. The second half of the album gives Lovett a chance to indulge his fondness for jazz and blues flavors on the cynical "She's No Lady," "M-O-N-E-Y," and "She's Hot to Go," and if Lovett would follow this path with great musical success on his next few albums, he was already traveling in the right direction and the songs and the arrangements are aces. And it's all but impossible to imagine anyone being given a big push by a major label in Nashville who could get away with the fanciful whimsy of "If I Had a Boat" and the stark and unsettling character sketch of "Pontiac" on the same album. If Lyle Lovett left any doubts at all about this man's gifts as a performer and songwriter, Pontiac proved that he had even more tricks up his sleeve than he'd let on first time out, and it's the first of several masterpieces in Lovett's career.

David Cantwell, Amazon.com

Pontiac is Lyle Lovett's finest album, but it still contains the strengths and weaknesses that have become Lyle's hallmarks. Crack playing, keen observations and clever lyrics, and a neo-traditionalist aesthetic that pulls in everything from Texas folk, honky-tonk and Western swing to old-school pop all shine brightly here, but they're consistently dulled by an ironic distance and a bitterness toward women that approaches misogyny. On Pontiac, the strengths generally win out, however, as Lovett convincingly stalks an old lover ("L.A. County"), says "take my wife, please" ("She's No Lady"), and, on the title track, offers a character sketch that could've been penned by Raymond Carver.

Daniel Durchholz, Barnes & Noble

In 1987, Lyle Lovett was a quizzical figure that Nashville couldn't quite fathom. He wore a dark business suit and tie instead of sprayed-on jeans and a hat, employed a jazzy horn section instead of fiddles, and as for that "Eraserhead" haircut -- well, who in Nashville knew what the hell "Eraserhead" was? PONTIAC, like its predecessor, LYLE LOVETT, was greeted with a collective Music City shrug, yet the rest of the world slowly caught on, thanks to Lovett's genre-bending material, which is by turns sly, ironic, and unsettlingly direct. Few performers could turn a topic such as a wedding that ends in double murder or a surreal seagoing horseback rider to their advantage, but that's what Lovett accomplishes on "L.A. County" and "If I Had a Boat," respectively. While "She's No Lady" and "She's Hot to Go" earned Lovett charges of misogyny, the songs are at least as self-deprecating as they are chauvinistic. Few, however, could miss the humor of "Give Back My Heart" or the grim minimalism of the title track. PONTIAC is one of several first-rate Lovett albums, but it's the one that first made plain his unique wit and ear.

Personnel: Lyle Lovett (vocals); Billy Williams (acoustic guitar); Ray Herndon (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (steel guitar); John Hagen (cello); Steve Marsh (saxophone); Matt Rollings (piano, synthesizer); Matt McKenzie, Edgar Meyer (bass); Harry Stinson (drums); Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Francine Reed, J. David Sloan, Harry Stinson (background vocals).

On his second album, Lovett solidified his songwriting abilities and his style, emerging as Nashville-via-Texas's answer to Randy Newman. Beneath PONTIAC's ornate production and elegant melodies lurks major-league irony and cynicism. Lovett's resonant, Jesse Winchester-like deadpan delivery is the Kabuki mask behind which insecurity and anthropomorphism run gleefully rampant. Our boy seems to have more troubles with women than the young Elvis Costello did; in "L.A. County," he drives cross-country to go postal at the marriage of his ex-love and her new beau. "She's No Lady" finds the narrator married and in the throes of existential despair, though it's mollified by some slick, jazzy chording. All this expertly crafted sarcasm is redeemed by the poignant, elliptical "If I Had a Boat," a folk-country ballad full of touching, poetic imagery, and by the Townes Van Zandt-ish "Simple Song," whose simple, minor-key melody carries considerable lyrical heft. As "She's No Lady" and "If I Had a Boat" remained staples of Lovett's shows for years to come, PONTIAC is rightly regarded as one of his key releases.

Lyle Lovett's a singer-songwriter with a Texas twang to his voice and music, and dollops of that indescribable quality, "style." His songs either exude real life or explore fanciful pseudo-reality, can rock with lots of roll, make you laugh and make you cry, explore possibilities or revel in memory. That's a rare talent, and Pontiac is that even rarer album that captures all the sides of the artist's personality and comes together as a cohesive portrait. With such subtle appeal, Lovett may not reach those on the boundaries of the cutting edge, but anyone with an appreciation for the beauty of language and the charm of a well-wrought melody will find more than enough richness here. Rockers are advised to turn to side two first, which opens with the hysterical lounge blues of "She's No Lady," jumps to the oh-so-true "M-O-N-E-Y," and closes with the swingin' "She's Hot To Go." Texas folk and country fans will be most pleased by side one, led by "If I Had A Boat" and featuring "Walk Through The Bottomland" and "Give Back My Heart." This Pontiac's got power, style and luxury, so take it for a spin.

Steve Pond, Rolling Stone, issue 522

This goes against the grain. At a time when homespun rootsiness is almost every country artist's calling card, Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith aren't afraid to show off a little book learnin'. And at a time when most of country music's newcomers are only as good as the songwriters whose work they choose or the producers they hire – to varying degrees, this goes for worthy artists ranging from Randy Travis, George Strait, the Judds and Reba McEntire to Dwight Yoakam, Patty Loveless and Ricky Van Shelton – Lovett and Griffith are songwriters, pure and simple. Though they both have formidable interpretive skills, it's the detail, depth and simple intelligence of their own compositions that make them artists whose work will endure.

If you haven't heard of them, it's partly because subtlety and restraint (and in Griffith's case, a string of independent-label LPs) aren't the way to make much noise. But Lovett and Griffith – Texas-bred friends who for the past half dozen years have brilliantly carried on the folk-country tradition of such great, underappreciated southern-Texas singer-songwriters as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt – have both made minor waves on the country charts and the folk circuits, and it's irresistible to think that this is one of those cases where talent, sooner or later, will turn people's heads.

In Lovett's case this should have happened in 1986, when he released his first solo album, Lyle Lovett. That LP contained what might well be the funniest, most biting and downright best country song of the past five years: "God Will," a beguiling little ditty in which Lovett informed a wandering girlfriend that the Lord would forgive her transgressions but the singer wouldn't – "and that's the difference between God and me."

In addition to that song the gorgeous, evocative ballads "This Old Porch," "If I Were the Man You Wanted" and "Closing Time" are enough to make Lyle Lovett an absolute must – and enough to make Pontiac a slight disappointment. But if "She's No Lady" and "M-O-N-E-Y" show the man who wrote "God Will" borrowing punch lines from Henny Youngman and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the new LP still contains abundant pleasures. An edgier, less country-oriented record, it's distinguished by Lovett's wicked intelligence and by the way in which he infuses his graceful, gentle lyricism with a bluesy bite. By turns playful ("Give Back My Heart"), melancholy ("I Loved You Yesterday," the exquisite "Simple Song"), despairing (the bitter, Randy Newman-style lament "Pontiac") and sprightly ("L.A. County"), Lovett writes songs whose lyrics are as flowing and musical as the tunes to which he sets them.

He sings in the voice of a guy who disdains commitment, a ramblin' man who still rues the day some damn woman managed to tame him, and in the voice of the barroom cynic who'll occasionally give you a glimpse of his sensitive side. Pontiac is a bitter compendium of regrets and disappointments (plus a pair of murders); if it sounds varied and resonant rather than desperately sad, you can thank the spare, deft arrangements, the exquisite grace of songs like "Walk Through the Bottomland" and the twisted, tongue-in-cheek cool that comes through in the likes of "If I Had a Boat," a bizarre reverie in which the singer dreams of going to sea with only his horse for company.

Lovett achieves his remarkable intimacy with a voice that's weathered, comfortable and haunting; Nanci Griffith does the same with a high-pitched voice that's seemingly innocent and guileless. And if Pontiac's characters endlessly regret bad relationships that have somehow survived, Little Love Affairs is an album of nostalgia for faded love, sung by a wounded optimist who is haunted by the little love affairs that didn't work out but stubbornly clings to her optimism.

The fragility in Griffith's voice is extraordinarily well suited to the stories she's telling, and the indelible sense of detail that has always characterized her work gives added poignance to songs like "Love Wore a Halo (Back Before the War)" and "So Long Ago." These stories don't cut as deep as those she told on The Last of the True Believers, the 1986 Rounder album that remains her most affecting work, but Griffith draws the southern-Texas landscape better than anybody this side of Guy Clark and savors the hurt of a lost love as well as any pop songwriter alive.

At the end of her album, Griffith brings out veteran singer-songwriter John Stewart for a duet, "Sweet Dreams Will Come." The Stewart song is initially cynical ("Lookin' for some love/I guess that's why people buy dogs"), but in the end it shrugs off the bad times and turns defiantly hopeful ("It's beginning to feel like those sweet dreams will come"). And that's as fitting a serenade as any to Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith.

© Frank Steven Groen