Chris Knight - Pick of the Week  (***)
Knight deals with subjects modern country music long ago wanted to leave behind.  The former coal mine inspector from Slaughters, Ky., writes unflinching tales about laborers, murderers, drifters, farmers, no-account boozers - and decent folk who sweat hard every day and have little to show for it.  When introduced in 1997, Knight entered to the roar of Music Row insiders and music critic's everywhere, who rightfully compared his dirt-road, powered-up acoustic tales to those of Steve Earle and John Prine.  But like those singer-songwriters, Knight proved too gritty to join the smiling faces of the hit parade, so now he's putting out acclaimed albums on small labels and bashing out long sets for fervent nightclub crowds. Knight's third album, The Jealous Kind, continues his focus on people who own little more than prideful stubbornness, and it's what he gets right in the details that makes his songs rise above.  There's the working-guy in love with a Mexican immigrant, about whom he says, "You know her English ain't that good, but what she meant is easily understood."  There's the outlaw lovers who "liked to be with each other just to see what the other would do."  And there's the young boy who wakes in the middle of the night when his married sister comes home in sunglasses and a bloody shirt - and then notices that his father is gone, as is the Winchester rifle from the wall. Five years in, Knight's still living up to the hype - and still deserving the attention originally predicted for him.