Things Were Never Good If They're Not Good Now

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Listen to Donovan Woods’ eighth album and you immediately understand how the Ontario raconteur became an in-demand writer for major folk and country artists on both sides of the border. Woods has a gift for building entire narrative universes in a single couplet: When he sings about being “on the Peace Bridge in a Kia Soul” and “leaving Buffalo with a cold sore” (on the fingerpicked lullaby “It’s Been Like That for a While”), you feel like you’re right there next to him in the passenger seat, enduring another agonizingly long wait at the Canada/US border. He writes with the sort of specificity where you can practically plot his songs on a mapping app—“116 West Main, Durham, NC” references the bookstore actually housed at that addre, while “Back for the Funeral” is a poignant portrait of old friends reunited by a moment of shared grief in a shopping mall in Burlington, Ontario. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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