Doug Paisley
Matthew Donaldson
★★★
Say What You Like
OUTSIDE. CD/DL/LP
Toronto singer-songwriter returns with fifth album.
“There’s so many ways to get rearranged,” sings Doug Paisley on I Wanted It Too Much, a bruise-pressing study in self-defeat and unmanaged decline. That line might ring true on the human level, but it would be a stretch to apply it to the songs on Paisley’s follow-up to 2018’s Starter Home. Instead, the Canadian sticks close to a country guitar palette, lap steel, electric piano and Felicity Williams’ gilt-tipped backing vocals subtly recalibrating the mood without tricks or alarms. Yet there’s an easy elegance to the title track’s Sultans Of Swing roll, or Old Hometown’s caught-in-a-trap dejection, while Sometimes It’s So Easy or Rewrite History have an undyed beauty. With many of Paisley’s songs dealing with people struggling between places, timeframes or lovers, such unforced, reflective songwriting deftly grounds these unsteady experiences, an arrangement that simply works.