RODNEY CROWELL
The Houston Kid
Sugar Hill

No bluegrass here--Crowell is indeed a Houston kid, and if we're to believe him, "Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and the Killer" put the rockabilly devil in him when he was just six. But can we believe him? The answer's complicated, and that's one reason the album works. Minute details in the opening "Telephone Road" and "The Rock of My Soul"--cherry Cokes, 13 stitches, confetti in a classroom--pack an autobiographical authority belied by other details, including a reference to jail time; throughout, songs sound remembered, only to function like fictions when you listen up. With Crowell's uncommonly light and easy vocals negotiating the reality riddles with something like grace, The Houston Kid has the aura of an old pro meditating on his past. And that sure beats regurgitating it.

Rolling Stone, 2001