Lyle Lovett continues to invent himself.

In his career, Lyle Lovett has been many things—a new kind of country singer-songwriter, a big-band revivalist, a Texas folkie, an actor in films (by Robert Altman, among others) and fodder for the celebrity gossip pages via a short-lived marriage to Julia Roberts.>>

Like trying to stuff his famously unruly head of hair inside a hat, it is impossible to contain Lovett’s talents inside a description that satisfies pop culture’s need for reductivism. Not that his record labels haven’t tried, however.

When Lyle Lovett’s self-titled first album came out in 1986, he was quickly marketed with that era’s “New Traditionalist” moniker, which encompassed friends like Nanci Griffith and k.d. lang (with whom he appears on Monday), Randy Travis and Dwight Yoakam. Though “God Will” earned him some airplay, the intricate wordplay of that song and others marked him as more of a literate Texas folk singer in the tradition of Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt.

He confirmed those singer-songwriter tendencies with Pontiac in 1987, which contains some of his most famous songs. “If I Had A Boat” and “LA County” have been covered so many times that they are practically folk songs themselves; “M-O-N-E-Y” and “She’s Hot To Go” gave early clues about his next unlikely career move: a sharp turn into the big-band jazz sound.

If the title of 1989’s Lyle Lovett and His Large Band didn’t give it away, the horn-filled, swinging arrangements immediately signaled that Lovett’s music was a long way from his country and folk roots. He still managed a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Nashville sound, however, with a straight cover of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man.”

Since establishing this career path with no discernible pattern, Lovett has continued to release albums and record songs that mix genres, styles, eras, and sounds with disdain—or at least a studied disregard—for whatever the mainstream is doing at the time. His folk-leaning songs like “North Dakota” (from The Road To Ensenada) maintained his knack for a short-story writer’s sense of place, while offbeat fare such as “Penguins” (from I Love Everybody) revealed his playful musical side.

Lovett has spent most of the past 10 years releasing backward-looking albums. 1998’s Step Inside This House was a double disc of songs by Texas songwriters who were a major influence on his work. The set included songs from Steve Fromholz, Guy Clark, Willis Allen Ramsey, Townes Van Zandt, Walter Hyatt and Robert Earl Keen among others. After a live album and the soundtrack to Altman’s Dr. T & the Women, the career retrospective Anthology, Vol. 1: Cowboy Man came out in 2001, followed by Smile, a collection of Lovett tracks featured on various movie soundtracks from Toy Story to The Apostle.

Lovett finally left MCA records, his label home since 1986, with 2003’s My Baby Don’t Tolerate, his first album of new material in seven years. Ironically, the new songs were more country than anything he had done in a while, serving as a reminder of how capable a writer Lovett himself was.

In September, Lovett is scheduled to issue his second album for Lost Highway, which might be another country-folk collection or, given his penchant for musical diversity and the divergent paths his career has taken, it might be something entirely different.

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LYLE LOVETT AND K.D. LANG play the Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey, on Monday, July 23, at 7:30pm. $85-$175. 372-4555.