For Doug Paisley, a tender-hearted stoic from Toronto whose songs land on the sweet spot between Kris Kristofferson and Gordon Lightfoot, the language of country music puts poetry into the mundane heartbreaks and setbacks of daily existence. On his third album Strong Feelings, Paisley seeks refuge in the beauty of the romantic lyrical metaphors that have populated the genre since at least the heyday of Hank Williams. “The ice it breaks the midday sun / in springtime when the river runs,” he sings in “My Love”, one of the album’s most bracingly pretty numbers. Essentially, Paisley is saying, “Nature tends to stay in motion, so no matter how hard or deeply you love something it’s going to leave you eventually.” But it sounds so much sweeter the way he says it.
Mortality is Paisley’s central theme; every life is overshadowed by the omnipresence of death, every romantic relationship dimmed by the inevitability of eventual separation. This is the subject matter of a zillion country songs, of course, but unlike that other, more famous country singer named Paisley (whose song “This is Country Music” extols the virtues of songwriting limned with the tangible directness of everyday language), Doug Paisley hears a song on the radio and feels suddenly lifted toward transcendence. “I turned the radio on 25 years ago/ And they were playing your song/ I looked for you on the town, thought I was tracking you down/ But you were there all along,” he croons on the gently chugging “Radio Girl”, and he’s either addressing an actual woman or equating what he’s just heard grace the airwaves with a long-lost love. In Doug Paisley’s songs, distinguishing between what’s “real” and what’s felt scarcely matters.
After a dues-paying tenure as a classic country covers act and the release of his understated self-titled 2008 debut, Paisley broke through in 2010 with his sophomore effort, Constant Companion, which was helped along by high-profile co-stars like Leslie Feist and the Band’s Garth Hudson. For Feelings, Paisley retains producer Stew Crookes and Hudson, who contributes crisp and cozy organ lines to five of the album’s 10 tracks that are so warm you want to rub your hands over them. (His playing on “Song My Love Can Sing” is by itself the worth the price of admission.) Subbing in for Feist on harmony vocals is legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara, who adds another layer of winsome melancholy to “It’s Not Too Late (To Say Goodbye)”. The album’s main musical ingredients—finger-picked guitar, lightly brushed drums, relaxed though subtly emotive vocals—knowingly recall the quietest, most pained cuts on 70s outlaw country records and the twangiest numbers on that era’s rock-leaning singer-songwriter LPs.
Musically, Strong Feelings reiterates Constant Companion, which is fine, because it’s a good formula and Paisley’s songs are stronger this time. (He even musters up something resembling swagger on the steadily rocking “To and Fro”.) It’s a sound that comes wrapped in a warm glow of nostalgia that’s undercut by lyrics revealing the slow poison of lingering too long on your memories. “I turned the ground and found the roots still burning/ A night moon that lingers in a blue sky brings a yearning/ If it takes a waterfall to drown all my doubts/ Sometimes it takes a lie to let me know what it’s all about,” Paisley says in “Old Times”. Sometimes a song on the radio can feel like self-delusion in the cold, hard light of experience. No matter the short-term pleasure it provides, life marches inexorably toward an uncertain destination. But Paisley seems content to turn it up anyway and let the music carry him away to a better place.
