I'm Not the Devil

I'm Not the Devil is Cody Jinks working in a more vulnerable register than his anthems sometimes allow — the production opens up more than usual, the drums more deliberate, space given for the lyric to unfold. The guitar work here is still unmistakably his, that particular outlaw-country tone that sits between twang and crunch, but the tempo creates room for reflection rather than forward momentum. Jinks' vocal carries a defensive tenderness — the insistence that he is not the devil reading as the statement of someone who has been cast in that role often enough to need to say it out loud, with full knowledge that the protest itself won't necessarily be believed. The lyric inhabits the specific loneliness of the man perceived as dangerous or corrupted who carries an interior that is more complicated than the perception allows. It is a country tradition going back to the outlaws — Cash's damaged protagonists, Waylon's refusal to be tamed — but Jinks locates something specifically contemporary in the articulation of that damage. The song is most powerful for listeners who have found themselves cast as the villain in someone else's story and know the exhaustion of that misidentification. It rewards a quiet room and honest company.