City And Colour Guide Me Back Home

Once the quiet folkie alter ego to his screamo band, Alexisonfire, Dallas Green’s City and Colour has, over the years, evolved into a powerhouse rock band in its own right. But for his 2017 Canadian tour, Green returned to the project’s unplugged roots, performing stripped-down sets with little more than acoustic guitar and piano. Guide Me Back Home compiles performances from across that trek into a 20-song survey that both revisits and reinvents favorites from his back catalog. Beyond boasting Green channeling the ache of early signatures like “Comin’ Home,” this collection also peels back the lustrous roots-rock dressing of his later releases to highlight the bruised core of songs like “If I Should Go Before You.” And while Green’s deadpan banter helps lighten the mood, by the time we hit the closing, white-knuckled strum through “Sleeping Sickness”—an implicit tribute to its original co-singer, the late Tragically Hip vocalist Gord Downie—there isn’t a dry eye to be found.