Lyle Lovett SMILE (CURB/MCA)

Smile amounts to a strange excuse for a new album from Lyle Lovett. The gimmick is that these are "Songs from the Movies," as the CD’s subtitle says, and it is true that Lovett recorded these tunes for a variety of film soundtracks from 1994 to 2000. But Ray Charles’s "What’d I Say" was a juke-joint staple for decades before Lovett’s spirited version, different from the original primarily because of Larry Campbell’s pedal steel-guitar solo, appeared in Where the Heart Is. And Irving Berlin’s classic "Blue Skies" will never be linked in most listeners’ minds with the 1994 film With Honors. Hollow concept aside, Lovett’s craggy and soulful vocals are always a welcome sound, and he does stretch himself on material with a theatrical feel, like the gloomy version of "Moritat (Mac the Knife)," which he did for Quiz Show, and "Walking Tall" from Stuart Little. But two major reasons for Lovett’s stature are his crafty compositions and his urbane-cowboy persona, both of which are MIA on this odd and disjointed disc.