Chris Knight is not a bad singer-songwriter. In fact, The Jealous Kind will probably give him the boost he obviously deserves, landing him on the record shelves of those who love Steve Earle, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams and other ne'er-do-well laconica. But he's also a better songwriter than what the bulk of The Jealous Kind lets him be. His best work comes when he borrows not from the likes of the aforementioned pantheon of ne'er-do-well laconica but when he abandons the notion of song and instead lets a story flow through.
     Witness "Broken Plow," a far more convincing nod to John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath than Bruce Springsteen's "The Ghost Of Tom Joad," while "Hello Old Man" is a convincing American prodigal son tale worthy of Larry McMurtry. Other tracks, such as "Carla Came Home" and "Me and This Road" are just fine as songs but you can't help but feel that the former would be more poignant with just a few more details about how an act of violence shattered the protagonist's innocence and that the latter is missing a catalogue of cracks and buckles that tell the stories of those who've wandered the path for several generations.
     Still, there are fine moments throughout and listeners will no doubt get that telltale chicken skin feeling while listening to "Staying Up All Night Long" and "A Train Not Running" and those moments (and several others) make The Jealous Kind worth having. But you can't help but wonder what might happen when Knight steps out of the way and finally lets the songs work for themselves.