Out March 17, 2023 via Outside Music; Produced by Afie Jervanen (BAHAMAS); Watch the video for “Say What You Like” today
Culled from 250 unrecorded songs spanning a decade of unregulated creativity, Canadian songwriter Doug Paisley’s new album Say What You Like is a snapshot of an artist functioning at his best and highest level—honest, exposed, searching, and yet comforting in his ability to communicate the universal in the struggles of the individual. And, with the help of producer Afie Jervanen—perhaps best known as recording artist BAHAMAS—it manages to be groovy too. One gets the sense from these songs that Paisley simply must write. “As a songwriter these days,” he reflected earlier this year, “there’s very little to gain and very little to lose so I am working only from the heart, there’s no other motive.” And on Say What You Like, it shows.
Due out on March 17, 2023, Say What You Like is Paisley’s first release since 2018’s Starter Home which landed on The New Yorker’s Ten Best Albums of the Year and a step in a brand new direction as the first release with Paisley’s new record label Outside Music, a welcoming, Canada-based home for a Canadian artist who’s long been signed to U.S.-based labels.
Today, Paisley shared the music video for Say What You Like’s titular opening track with fans. “Say What You Like” finds Paisley wrestling with past friends’ or lovers’ opinions of him, all backed up by a lightly funky rhythm with a slightly country tinge not seen since the early days of J.J. Cale’s lo-fi productions. “When something important disappears from your life, your imagination is sometimes called upon to fill the gaps,” Paisley says. “You could fill another universe with all the things people imagine other people are saying or thinking about them.” Featuring Jurvanen and Christine Bougie on guitars, Don Kerr on drums, Felicity Williams on harmonies, and Darcy Yates on Bass, “Say What You Like” is a welcome introduction to what the future holds for Paisley, his songs, and his sound.
“Say What You Like” can now be streamed or purchased at this link and the full album can be pre-saved or pre-ordered ahead of its March 17th release right here.
Say What You Like Tracklist:
Say What You Like
Sometimes It’s So Easy
Wide Open Plain
Rewrite History
Almost
If I Wanted To
I Wanted It Too Much
Make It A Double
You Turn My Life Around
Holy Roller
Old Hometown
More About Doug Paisley:
Since the release of his self-titled debut fifteen years ago, Doug Paisley has earned accolades for unflinchingly self-reflective songs delivered with simplicity and beauty. Though Paisley has always collaborated with topnotch Canadian musicians including luminaries like Garth Hudson, Leslie Feist, and Mary Margaret O’Hara, his records have drawn poignancy also from moments where the listener hears Paisley as he most often hears himself: unadorned and alone with his guitar. The critical response to Paisley’s sophomore release, Constant Companion, underlined this quality. MOJO, naming the album one of the top ten of 2010, found in its “rare kind of purity” evidence that “an anti-star is born.” While Rolling Stone deemed it to be a “nearly perfect singer-songwriter record,” UNCUT described it as “sure-footed and ageless…uncluttered, sad and unerringly lovely.” The “quiet and contemplative” nature of Paisley’s last record, Starter Home, continued this trend, earning it a place in The New Yorker’s top ten albums of 2018.