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Saturday, November 14th, 2015

3:00pm

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Doug Paisley with Marc Roy With the kind of understatement that's typical of the man, Doug Paisley describes his wondrous new album Strong Feelings as "just 10 new songs. It's a lot less simple and unadorned than other recordings I've made, but it's just as earnest and straightforward as what I've done before."This is all in keeping with the Toronto songwriter's low-key approach to his art, preferring to let his songs speak for themselves. A fact borne out by the nature of the effusive praise given to Paisley's last effort, 2010's Constant Companion. MOJO, who included it in their top ten albums of the year and extolled its "rare kind of purity", declared that "an anti-star is born". Rolling Stone called it a "nearly perfect singer-songwriter record", while UNCUT singled it out as "sure-footed and agelessuncluttered, sad and unerringly lovely."Both Constant Companion and 2008's self-titled debut drew their power from the minimalism of Paisley's unique take on 1970's American folk rock. Largely set to simple arrangements of acoustic guitar and piano, it was an unobtrusive style that served to heighten the impact of his beguiling songs about relationships in various states of ruin and flux.Strong Feelings expands on the same preoccupations, but this time Paisley has also opened up the sound, recording with a revolving band of brothers that includes The Cairo Gang's leader/guitarist Emmett Kelly, bassist Bazil Donovan, drummer Gary Craig, keyboardist Robbie Grunwald and elusive Canadian songstress Mary Margaret O'Hara. Also aboard is the legendary Garth Hudson, who also made signature contributions to Constant Companion.Not that Paisley has forsaken any of the delicacy and quiet rapture of his previous work. Recorded in a new analogue studio in Toronto (save for one memorable session in the lobby of Ottawa's National Arts Centre, with Hudson playing a Steinway piano that belonged to composer Glenn Gould), Strong Feelings bears his usual trademark signature, but it's an altogether more assured work, full of rich texture and fine detail. "This album took a lot more time than the others and involved more people," says Doug. "I find that consistent touring and identifying yourself as a professional musician can take some of the spontaneity out of things. So as an alternative I tried to be more deliberate with this record, further developing and laboring over music where previously I might have been more likely to cast something in its earliest stages. I tried to get into creatively challenging recording sessions to drown out my ideas of what I, or anyone else, thought my music was about."