Ever since 2001's The Houston Kid, country singer Rodney Crowell has been coming to terms with his private life in his music. The largely acoustic Sex & Gasoline is his meditation on femininity — not just a celebration of women, but a real attempt at empathy. In the midtempo shuffle "The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design," he imagines what it feels like to be female. Over the fingerpicked folk of "Moving Work of Art," he reveals his own tendency to objectify women. And in "I've Done Everything I Can," he offers a father's acceptance of a troubled daughter's choices. Aside from occasional brushstrokes of pedal steel guitar, producer Joe Henry extracts most of the "country" from these songs, revealing Crowell to be simply a master songwriter, no matter what the genre.