And so we have Dave Newberry, whose debut album When We Learn the Things We Need to Learn seems less written than passed down, like the sing-song melody that makes album-opener “Since I’ve Been Growing” sound as old as the hills. Or the way that the loping acoustic dirge “We Reap What We Sow” settles into the folds of your brain like an ancient benediction. “There’s a lot of folk saying that it’s time for more praying,” Newberry sings, delivering a gorgeous and brave threnody for not just our end-times, but all the ones that preceded it. Banjo, accordion, and a single, authoritative bass drum provide all the embroidering it requires.

In “4th Fret”, Newberry sweetly ruminates on the act of making music and the cold reality of Vancouver rain, while addressing the pregnant unwinding of life itself between the lines, gently pushing forward through verses that seem to circle around each other. “Come On”, meanwhile, is a violent conflagration printed to audio tape; a Dylan-esque talking blues stationed inside a burning barn, with calliope-like organ cutting dizzy swirls behind Newberry’s urgent vocal performance.

Perhaps its significant that as a former carpenter’s assistant, Newberry turned to music as a form of physiotherapy after injuring his hand on a table saw, simply transferring his instincts as a craftsman and in turn emerging as a Canadian troubadour in the classic mould. The sound of When We Learn the Things We Need to Learn feels as intimately linked to its country of origin as the work of those artists stretched out before him, from Lightfoot on up to Northern Electric label mate Herald Nix. The sound isn’t continuous, but the spirit is, and Newberry – who has lived from one end of this enormous country to the other – delivers a trenchant form of alt.Canadiana at times as crisp as mountain spring water and at other times as wide and yawning as a drive through blanched prairie.

As ever, producer Jon Wood brings the lightest touch to Newberry’s songs, even in the relative bombast of “Gambling Song” - a vaguely comic tale of woe driven to high melodrama when a nightmare carnival band marches right through the middle of it - or “The End”, which uses slashing reverb and pulsed rhythms to elegantly make its point.

Maybe it’s a Canadian thing, all this restraint, understatement, and good taste sublimated into a quiet power. Or maybe it’s merely the work of fully-formed artists in a Cinderella collaboration – people like Wood, and guest vocalists Nina Flemming, Sioux Newberry, and Connely Farr - guided by the principle that less is always plenty.

Either way, we’re left with an affecting debut that honours all the wit, warmth, and intelligence that audiences have come to expect when Dave Newberry mounts the stage. Based on this, and addressing the sentiment of the album title, what does he still need to learn? Not much, apparently.