Starter Home

Paste (magazine) - "Paisley's tunes are understated enough that they stick in your head without you even noticing, until you're going about your day and humming one of his melodies and wondering how it got there"

A starter home is where a couple begins to live out its dreams yet the term is a contradiction of sorts. A home suggests permanence but the starter modifier acknowledges this dwelling is temporary: a place that will serve as the launching pad to greater things, or perhaps lead to a premature end. As a former carpenter, singer/songwriter Doug Paisley understands the power of habitats and as a writer, he's keenly attuned to habits of humans. Starter Home, his fourth album, finds Paisley deliberately mining the intimacies that exists within a relationship and how physical spaces can accentuate or erode those connections. Paisley's nine tales of the heart are subtly etched and softly delivered -- a listener may need to lean into the speaker to discern the narratives -- but there's no distancing effect at play in the production. Hushed though it may be, Starter Home is a cozy, even comforting, collection of burnished roots music that feels a bit like a musical version of reclaimed wood: it draws upon tradition and is spun into something tasteful, handsome, and fresh. Such complexities are why Starter Home is so resonant: it's an album that reveals a little bit more of itself with each listen. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine