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full screen Brad Paisley is unusually inspired at Hovet in Stockholm. Photo: Wai Kei Fung/Rockfoto Bildbyrå
CONCERT Few are better at mixing broad-legged bar counter country with well-found contemporary reflections.
Even fewer get to make such a generous show.
When Brad Paisley is this inspired, it doesn’t really matter that he offers almost the same concert as five years ago.
Brad Paisley
Place: Court, Stockholm. Public: 6 000. Length: 103 minutes. Best: “Whiskey Lullaby” and “The Mona Lisa”. Worst: That we seem to have to wait a while longer for the new album.
The tour is called “Son of the mountains” and I guess the idea was to Brad Paisleys new album of the same name would have had time to come out by now.
Only four songs from there have been released so far and the 51-year-old from Glen Dale in West Virginia plays only one of them tonight, the ballad “Same here” which in the studio version has a small guest appearance by Volodymyr Zelensky and is about how small the differences actually are between people and cultures after all. The singer says it is partly inspired by his five previous visits to Stockholm.
In a way I would have liked to hear more new stuff but Paisley probably wants to save on that. Instead, we get a concert whose song list is strikingly similar to the one with which he last visited Hovet five years ago (and also went to Gothenburg and Gävle the summer before last).
Which in advance felt a little unimaginative, but turns out to play quite a small role in reality. For the singer and not least the guitarist Paisley, with his solid collection of well-used Telecasters, is rarely inspired tonight.
He also praises some of the capital’s guitar shops that he has visited earlier in the day, where one person also wanted the surprise of the evening: the super-fast instrumental “Time warp” that stretches both Paisley’s and the band’s abilities to the maximum.
Otherwise, we get a generous overview of most parts of the 25-year recording career, and just the right amount of free audience courting.
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fullscreenBrad Paisley finds a heartwarming mix of party and seriousness. Photo: Wai Kei Fung/Rockfoto Bildbyrå
Amidst the exploding country wave, it’s safe to assume that some of tonight’s audience is new, and they can hardly complain about either the snort-tight Nashville band or the singer’s rare casual way of taking an arena.
Because he is hard-hitting at seamlessly mixing broad-legged rock country with partying into the weekend and crying in the beer with a clear and fun look at various contemporary phenomena. Sometimes it almost feels like he has to make an effort not to write for clever songs.
The arch-American party sprinkler “American Saturday night”, for example, is about the fact that the very thing about the USA is how multicultural it is. Nowadays the row is included ”there’s a Ukrainian flag hanging behind the bar”.
In “Whiskey Lullaby” Paisley has nice help on vocals and mandolin from the excellent heater Sierra Hull. During the waltz “I’m still a guy” he signs upturned caps and takes selfies with the fans’ phones. Just like last time, there will be “kiss cam” on the screens in “She’s everything” and a generally heartwarming atmosphere.
Paisley pokes in a bit of as well Princes ”Purple rain” som Merle Haggards “Mama tried”, the latter in a kind of extension of the tribute to the role models in “This is country music”. John Denvers “Take me home, country roads” is of course right in the middle of the set.
In the end, he has managed to get the ball rolling to such an extent that it really is just a matter of smashing the whole evening with the audience favorites “The Mona Lisa” and “Alcohol”.
In the latter, Brad Paisley sings about having ”some of the best times you’ll never remember” but this show will stay in the memory for a long time.
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FACT
All the songs
1. Southern comfort zone 2. Wrapped around 3. Ticks 4. River bank 5. Perfect storm 6. The love boat/Water 7. Online 8. Waitin’ on a woman/Then 9. Time warp 10. Last time for everything/Purple rain 11. Mountain music/Old Alabama 12. I’m still a guy 13. Take me home, country roads 14. Same here 15. Whiskey lullaby (med Sierra Hull) 16. This is country music/Mama tried 17. American Saturday night 18. The nervous breakdown 19. Celebrity 20. She’s everything 21. I’m gonna miss her 22. Mud on the tires 23. The Mona Lisa Encore: 24. Alcohol
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