From her early studio days as a fiddle-playing sweet-voiced singer working with country-folk veteran
Chip Taylor,
Carrie Rodriguez has grown and blossomed over her five solo albums into a poised and confident vocalist, and perhaps more importantly, since she could always sing and play that fiddle until you came out of your boots, she's developed into a mature, confident, and extremely moving and graceful songwriter, which is everywhere evident on the
Lee Townsend-produced
Give Me All You Got. Songs like the marvelous opener, "Devil in Mind" (along with its instrumental reprise later in the sequence), and "Whiskey Runs Thicker Than Blood," both of which
Rodriguez wrote or co-wrote, have a timeless feel to them, almost like she just happened to come upon them and decided to sing. And she does pretty well with other folks' songs here, too, including
Chip Taylor's "I Cry for Love" and a pair of songs from
Luke Jacobs, the wonderful and assured "Tragic" and the beautiful "I Don't Mind Waiting" (sung as a duet with
Jacobs), and everything on this impressive outing fits together like honey and smoke in a warm but vibrant Texas breeze. ~ Steve Leggett