Description
Triage is Rodney’s 18th studio album, his first since the acclaimed Texas in 2019, and it’s something of a departure. Sure, there are plenty of examples of the Rodney Crowell we all know, but Triage also introduces us to a more introspective personality. There are quite a few songs here that are deeply personal and, unsurprisingly, given the tribulations that we have all had to endure over the past couple of years, that examine the political, climatic and economic upheavals of our times.
The story of Triage goes back to the start of the pandemic. Rodney had an album that he considered to be close to completion, but, as the pandemic and the associated quarantine started to bite, he locked himself away with his wife, Claudia, two dogs and a pen and paper. New songs presented themselves, old songs were discarded and new, improved verses to existing songs were devised. Eventually, Rodney was able to return to the studio to tweak the original tapes and to add the new material to come up with this excellent collection of songs.
Alongside his trademark sound, there are also chunks of grungy rock, splatterings of blues and jazz and even a peppering of funk, expertly played by a handpicked group of musicians to accompany Rodney’s voice and vintage Gibson acoustic guitars in a set of songs that deal with such issues as the nature of love, transient global amnesia disorder, human impact upon wildlife habitats, religion, drug addiction and mortality.
