Yep Roc Records
2008
Sex & Gasoline
About This Album
Sex and Gasoline is Rodney Crowell's first record in three years, where he goes further inside but pulls out accessible and jagged observations on the conflicting poles in what it means to be a conscious human being who struggles with unconscious urges. In these songs he also investigates what it means to be a man who tries -- and fails a lot -- to empathize with and respect women in a culture that, whether it admits it or not, hates them. Produced by Joe Henry and performed by his own nearly ubiquitous sound-painting crew of drummer Jay Belleros, bassist David Pilch, keyboardist Patrick Warren, pedal steel, mandolin, and dobro master Greg Leisz, and guitar boss Doyle Bramhall III, this is Crowell at his most direct and dense: he channels many other songwriters, but as always he remains completely his own man. The title track opens the set with a mutant acoustic blues; it works with a culture-jamming sense of poetry, with images as angry as Steve Earle's (without the autodidacticism) yet as dense and raggedly elegant as Bob Dylan's. Henry's killer band adorns Crowell's blur of images with a strident yet warm piano, a mandolin, strummed layers of acoustic guitar, and a throbbing upright bassline walking the snare toward his indictment of how we view women, what we expect of them, and an exhortation to admit it.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,4,6 and 9)

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