Toronto’s Donovan Woods has built a career on melancholia, crafting wistful songs that tug at the heartstrings of anyone who’s had feelings about partners, ex-partners, where you’re from, where you shouldn’t have gone. His fourth album follows in those footsteps, but with the assured sharpness of an old pro. Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled is his most solid album in a catalogue full of them.
Woods often gets called a “songwriter’s songwriter,” and there’s truth in that: his economy of language and knack for hooks feel so natural, he could probably write a gut-puncher like We Never Met in his sleep. More instrumentation than on previous albums lends weight to Woods’s ever-present acoustic guitar, as on the pedal steel breeze of May 21, 2012 or the bells and strings of Parkdale-referencing soft-rock hit On The Nights You Stay Home. The closer, Leaving Nashville, is an emotional, bittersweet ode to the dark side of following a dream.
But the most killer track is They Don’t Make Anything In That Town, a stark piano ballad that’ll break the heart of anyone who escaped their hometown but not its shadow.
Top track: They Don’t Make Anything In That Town
Donovan Woods plays Massey Hall on March 5. Win a copy of the album here.
