Toronto’s Jerry Leger was building up a fine head of steam on this side of the pond a few years back. His live shows and almost back-to-back releases of Too Broke To Die (a retrospective collection) and Time Out For Tomorrow were widely acclaimed. He was due to build on this acclaim with a spring tour of the UK and Europe in 2020 but like everything else back then, the shutters sprang up.

Two years later, Leger has a new album out and a whole new set of dates over here coming up. The album, Nothing Pressing, can be considered (like numerous other current releases) as a product of the pandemic. In plain terms it consists of home recorded songs, solo studio efforts and, once they were able to do so, his band (The Situation) weigh in. This allows the album a fine degree of light and shade. Delve into the songs however and there’s more shade than light in terms of Leger’s lyrics and preoccupations. There’s none of the mercurial Dylan like rock which Leger is so adept at, instead the band songs are stoic and grounded, more rooted in a Neil Young like ditch than Dylan like flashes of lightning. When he does root around in a Dylan like guise it’s on the skeletal Underground Blues, a home recorded demo with sparks flying from Leger’s raw electric guitar calling to mind the bard’s ghosts of electricity.

The album opens with Leger strumming his 1959 Gibson acoustic guitar on the title song. Predating the pandemic but eerily prescient, it’s a sylvan fantasy of sorts as he moves into the country but is soon “bored out of his mind.” As if his wish to leave this fantasy was borne out, Kill It With Kindness is announced with a blast of electric guitar as the band sway in on a crunchy rocker which tackles personal demons, Leger here sounding like Phil Ochs fronting Elvis Costello’s Attractions. There’s more crunch on the swampy Stray Gators like slouch of Recluse Revisions which dives head first into ditch territory. Apparently inspired by the ennui encapsulated in Joan Didion’s 1970 novel, Play It As It Lays, Leger sings of a slightly jaded bunch of comrades, getting on in years, content now to just “play cowboy songs they know by heart.” It’s a mighty achievement and the towering point of the album. Wait A Little Longer, another full band outing has Angie Hilts singing harmony giving the song a lilting Everlys’ like sound, somewhat akin to that employed by the likes of T Bone Burnett or Nick Lowe when they go down an Everlys’ alleyway. Hilts also features on the jangled power pop of Have You Ever Been Happy, its upbeat sound belying the questing lyrics.

The remainder of the album is more introspective, perhaps reflecting Leger’s time spent in lockdown. With Only You is a yearning love song given a late era Beatles’ like burnish while A Page You’ve Turned is a sad, country like lament which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Flatlanders album. He delves deep into his vulnerabilities on Sinking In, another home recording, which exists on a similar plane to Alex Chilton’s fragile songs on the third Big Star album, but the crux of the disc is the deeply moving Still Patience, a song which came to Leger following the death of a close friend. Lennon like in its intimate delivery, the song resonates with loss. Closing the album as he began, strumming his trusty Gibson, Leger offers up Protector. A brilliant hangdog weariness inhabits the song which is like a self-composed eulogy with Leger posing at times as a gunfighter facing his last shootout. It’s kind of brilliant.

Highly nuanced and very finely written and delivered, Nothing Pressing certainly deserves Leger’s description of it as his “deepest artistic statement yet.” It’s a superb album.

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Hot on the heels of his critically acclaimed retrospective collection, Too Broke To Die, compiled for the European market in view of his increasing popularity on this side of the pond, Jerry Leger excels on Time Out For Tomorrow. Harnessing his romantic troubadour persona to a mercurial band sound replete with sweeping organ and quicksilver guitars, Leger hits the bulls eye on each of the ten songs here.

Time Out For Tomorrow runs the gamut of classic Americana styled music. His band, The Situation, are quite superb throughout while the production (Mike Timmins of The Cowboy Junkies) captures every nuance. Consider the contrast between the opening Canvas Of Gold, a grand song borne aloft on swathes of slide guitar, and the crepuscular doings, singing saws and Romany guitar and fiddle on the dark ballad Survived Like A Stone. Both jump out at the listener allowing one to consider Leger equally adept at brash rock’n’roll and introspective meanderings. The album as a whole leans towards the former but when Leger turns inwards he offers us the glorious I Would, a glistening jewel of a song which floats over a simple country rock backbone with glowering guitar shadowing Leger’s achingly romantic lyrics. He takes to piano for another heartache on That Ain’t Here which is simply majestic. The song, so simple yet so memorable, has the tang of classic writers such as Lennon or John Hiatt.

There’s an undeniable whiff of classic rock throughout the album as Leger dips into the past to flavour his songs. Justine chimes perfectly with a mid sixties vibe, a conglomeration of visionary Dylan with sparks flying from guitar and organ as if Bloomfield and Kooper were sparring in the studio. Read Between The Lines rattles along as Leger testifies with an anguished passion over an excellent mash up of tin pan alley melodrama and a hip Chuck Prophet like insouciance. This potpourri allows Leger to deliver songs like Burchell Lake, a faded portrait of a once thriving community featuring snakelike slide guitar, along with, what is possibly the best example of the band’s mastery of dynamite dynamics here, the bustling romance of Corner Light, a song to savour. Leger closes the album with the sweet country rock themed Tomorrow In My Mind which has echoes of John Hartford woven within it. A lovely close to a great album.

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One of Canada’s secrets until his breakthrough album of last year, Nonsense and Heartache, Jerry Leger is one of those artists who believes in getting the music out there, putting in the groundwork and letting his gigs spread the word. Indeed, last year when he was appearing in Norway around about the time of his birthday, he managed to get the promoters to find him a “cool pub” to play in on that date, “Just to play some music and have a hang afterwards.” His first UK tour last year was a success  and he’s coming back for more dates this month and this limited edition retrospective will only be available on CD at the shows although it is available as a download purchase for those not able to attend.

Too Broke To Die pulls together 19 songs from Leger’s 10 albums so far along with two previously unreleased numbers and it’s a splendid introduction to his fine blend of folk, rock and, for want of a better word, Americana. There are reflective ballads and balls to the wall rockers scattered throughout with the connective tissue consisting of Leger’s voice which is somewhat of a more mellifluous take on the late sixties Dylan coupled with an occasional resemblance at times to the vocals of Daniel Meade. Without any detailed info re the makeup of the album we’d guess it’s in chronological order as there’s a definite sense of the songs, arrangements and production values becoming more sophisticated as the disc plays. There’s a delightful brashness on the opening Red City which is part bar room rocker, part folk punk sneer while Old Shoes On my Feet retains that sneer while also stepping into saloon sing-along territory. See My Baby Run and Too Broke To Die expand on this with the latter featuring some ferocious rockabilly like guitar while Leger snarls away.

Beating The Storm and Round Walls bring the temperature down with jangling guitars recalling the likes of Nikki Sudden and The Jacobites while Wrong Kind Of Girl captures some kind of Texas styled story telling but it’s on You Got Away From Me that Leger has a stylistic leap of sorts. Here he’s still recognisably the guy who sang Round Walls a few songs earlier but here the song is swathed in an excellent sound with washes of organ, malleted percussion and sly slide guitar. His Dylan side is highlighted on Den Of Sin while Pass The Time recalls Lloyd Cole and The Commotions and on You Really Got It So Bad he manages the difficult task of joining up the sensibilities of Phil Ochs with a Lennon like melancholia.

There’s perhaps too many comparisons going on here so let’s  just say that the live version of Drive Away Tonight has the making of a country classic in it with its eternal themes of driving and lost love (and it’s a fine example of what to expect from Leger in a live situation). Factory Made meanwhile is a fine example of a film noir trip into the loss of the American dream (although of course Leger is Canadian) and The Big Smoke Blues thrashes away but in a much slinkier switchblade style than the earlier rockers. Leger’s well into his stride by now and songs such as Another Dead Radio Star and Thing’s Are Changing ‘Round Here are probably best described as sounding like Jerry Leger. He’s a rock’n’roll romantic and a bit of a poet by now and the closing songs all reflect this. The album is an interesting (and very listenable) portrait of his artistic arc and, as we said above, if you want a hard copy, you need to get to one of the upcoming shows including one at Glasgow’s Hug & Pint in 14th April. All the tour dates are here.

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