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Comparisons between musicians usually do a disservice to all involved, but ignoring the minor detail of one sui generis decades-long career, Doug Paisley and Neil Young share many key traits. Both are Canadian and have a grasp of American roots-music traditions so deep you’d think it comes from their bones. More important, Paisley, like Young and few other singer-songwriters, has the power of immediate communication: When he opens his mouth, you believe him utterly—that he has crossed the rivers, climbed the mountains, come through the fires, lived every molecule of what he sings. Paisley’s self-titled album (on the No Quarter label) is last year’s most extravagantly unadorned piece of music: plain as dirt and direct as sunlight, and no less elemental. “Frost leaves a sign on your window?/?Now you know the summer’s been and gone?/?You wonder when you’ll see another one?/?Where did the sweet love go?” he sings on “A Day Is Very Long,” fan-dancing the profound behind the mundane. There are few highs and lows in Paisley’s economical songs; he’s whittled out his space in the middles, where all the forethought and aftermath that sandwich life’s big events go on, though gravity and shadow loom toward the edge of the sky. While his album is gorgeously spare—bass, drum and backing vocals on some songs, plus his guitar and keyboards—Paisley will be playing solo at these shows, which is only fitting for the purest voice to come down the pike in ages.— Mike Wolf
10:58 PM
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