Triage, Rodney Crowell’s 18th album, finds the Americana legend taking stock of himself and the world around him. Starting with the opener “Don’t Leave Me Now,” a song about owning his mistakes, he’s crafted a roots record that surges, hushes and displays empathy for the venal, the broken and the drowning. Since 2001’s memoir-in-song The Houston Kid, social issues and higher consciousness have tempered Crowell’s wild-eyed Texas romps and his tender romanticism. The narrators of the songs on Triage dig deep beneath what you can see on the surface until they hit unflinching truths about hypocrisy and the complications of human nature.
Best Reckoning
