“Exactly Like This” is more than just the title of Doug MacLeod’s new recording says radio host Ian McHugh:
“Doug MacLeod is a man who understands that performance is the cornerstone of music. He gets the fact that no matter what studio trickery is involved, what instruments are played and all the other ephemera that other musicians obsess over means nothing if a song isn’t delivered with soul, commitment and honesty. It was a fact that was made clear on his last album and it’s reinforced here on his latest release, Exactly Like This. What’s even better is that he has a team around him that understand this fact just as well as Doug himself. … This is as honest a record as you’re likely to hear, a microcosm of one of Doug’s gigs, with the storytelling and improvisational playing to the fore. Doug states in the liner notes that the album is called Exactly Like This because that’s what he says at the start of a tune at his gigs. … It’s hard to imagine any of these songs getting any better, each is as near to perfect in execution as I could ask, enough roughness to be human, but the only way you’ll hear them this way is to get the album.” —Ian McHugh, Tone Monkey