somewhere we have to go

Doug Paisley is here & here.

Way back in 2002 Beck dropped the ramshackle pomo hipster guise long enough to record a fairly straightforward singer-songwriter break-up album. Sure, he kept some space cowboy effects and had his pops score some orchestra for a song, but Sea Change was musically restrained compared to previous works. What wasn’t restrained at all was Beck’s emotional involvement in the songs. Playful ironic distance had been his dominant aesthetic attitude, but it’s hard to maintain that stance when you are dragged through hell.

Beck - Guess I'm Doing Fine [buy]

And all that brings me to Doug Paisley and his 2009 self-titled album. I’ve read the Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot comparisons (and I recall Gordon's name being thrown around (derisively) when Sea Change hit the streets), but what I hear on the album are similarly modest musical ideas as those found on Sea Change coupled with a few more years of break-ups and maybe a divorce to throw into the mix. But if Sea Change’s songs were created out of post-break-up misery, Doug Paisley is a study in the hard earned mysteries of mid-life love. Paisley's characters aren't saying goodbye to someone, they are risking saying hello again, “despite all the reasons and the cares and what’s above” -- as Paisley sings on “What About Us?”

Doug Paisley - What About Us? [buy]

The characters in these songs know for sure that there are limits that won’t go away and rough edges that are going to stay rough. But the desperation for love never subsides and those rough edges come to be seen, come to be known, as the price of admission to any sort of love worthy of the name.

Doug Paisley - We Weather [buy]

Go grab yourself a copy: this one's a keeper.