The long awaited follow-up to what is now regarded as his comeback album – the superb Houston Kid released in 2001 after a long lay-off – Fate’s Right Hand finds Crowell in an even more introspective, contemplative mood. In fact it doesn’t get more self-examining than on a song like ‘Time To Go Inward’ where the one time Grammy winner admits: “I’m afraid to stare down the barrel of the choices I’ve made.”
One of Crowell’s strengths in the past has been to utilise a song as a confessional tool and here he seizes the opportunity at every turn. On the mid-tempo opener ‘Still Learning How To Fly’ he proclaims: “I wanna be reckless, I wanna be vain, I wanna make love like a runaway train,” though he appears to rein in his ego on the rocking ‘Preachin To The Choir’ – “My self-importance is a god-forsaken bore, I aim for heaven but I wake up on the floor.”
The state of the world is another of Crowell’s concerns and on ‘It’s A Different World Now’ he takes a wry look at a modern day landscape of corrupt politics and corporate greed where, “the rivers flow like powdered milk and the wind blows with a wheeze.”
It’s not all as downbeat as it sounds. ‘The Man In Me’ is a big band rocker on a par with his New Country heyday (circa 1988’s Diamonds And Dirt) while both the title track and ‘Earthbound’ are stream-of-consciousness list-songs (like REM’s ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It’ or Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’). Along the way he manages to namecheck such venerable institutions as DKNY, Ken Starr, Walter Kronkite, Aretha Franklin, the Dalai Lama and – wait for it – Seamus Heaney!
As is usual with Crowell the songs are strong melodically and sung with conviction while the playing and arrangements are faultless. Though there is nothing as catchily commercial as ‘I Walk The Line Revisited’, his inspired collaboration with his ex father-in-law Johnny Cash on The Houston Kid, Fate’s Right Hand is arguably a more satisfying album.