Tell the Truth
Lee Roy Parnell has been scoring country hits and tearing up Texas roadhouses for many years now, but he's never had a better album to tour behind thanTell the Truth. Partly that's because he's never written a more personal batch of songs--nearly every composition here is charged with self-discovery. "How can true love ever find us, if we're just someone we've made up," he wonders over the title track's steamy sway. On a Pentecostal house wrecker called "Brand New Feeling," he testifies joyously: "I found a brand-new me." His music's reborn, too. Parnell's blues and boogie-woogie licks have more bite here than he's ever allowed them (witness the slide guitar on "Crossin' Over"), and the country singer he used to work at being doesn't show up once. Granted, Parnell's vocals are rarely distinctive. But when he's paired at the mic with folks likeBonnie Bramlettand (on the sure-fire crowd pleaser "South by Southwest")Delbert McClinton, it hardly matters.--David Cantwell