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(2022) Jerry Leger - Nothing Pressing
Review:
Nothing Pressing is Jerry Leger‘s tenth studio album and his second for the Cowboy Junkies’ label. Like many others, this latest offering from the Toronto singer-songwriter is informed by the experience of the pandemic with its reflections on isolation, longing and gratitude, but also on the passing of one of his best friends. Calling John Prine to mind, the simple strummed title track with Michael Timmons on ukulele gets the ball rolling. It is essentially a song about having time on your hands (“moved out into the country/ but now I’m bored out of my mind”) and inertia (“The ceiling is peeling/And there’s something in the walls/But I got nothing pressing/To take me away from it all”). He cranks it up then for some ringing guitar on the nasally sung, and swaggery Dylan-tinged folk-rock Kill It with Kindness with its theme of depression (“I’ve seen what a mind can do/I’ve been through it before/Takes a grip of your happiness/And shoves you into the wall/I dull it down with alcohol/But then I feel more depressed/So I treat it like my worst enemy/And kill it with kindness”). He turns to a more Neil Young-like measured walking bassline beat and harmonica for Recluse Revisions, a number that speaks of getting older (“I thought this bar was gone/Looks the same after so long/ You’re the one who’s different”) and not taking shit from anyone (“Been in this blur before/But now it matters so much more/That I don’t give a care/Now that we’re old/Ain’t gonna do what we’re told/On the gambling road/We play it as it lays”) but perhaps somewhat more mellow (“we don’t play anything hard/Just cowboy songs/We know by heart”). Tim Bovaconti on pedal steel and Angie Hilts on vocals, Wait A Little Longer is another painted in Young colours and again veined with both patience (“You know I can wait a little longer/I could always wait for you”) and uncertainty (“Drawing pictures in the smoke/Back to the grind and the shuffling/Our deck of who really knows”), the line “In the pines/I went tumbling/Between the cowards and the jokes” worthy of vintage Dylan. Isolation, loneliness and loss underpin the solo acoustic guitar and keys Still Patience (“I go drinking by myself/When I got nobody else/For misery’s company/And when the bright lights end in me/I see you”), Leger also just accompanying himself on the Dylanesque bluesy picked Underground Blues. Working with the full band line up of bassist Dan Mock, drummer Kyle Sullivan, Tim Bovaconti on electric guitar and Angie Hilts providing backups, Have You Ever Been Happy? has a mid-tempo walking beat and, despite the title, he says it’s a hopeful number about being respectful, appreciative and considerate (“I have a hand to hold/Thank God/I know, I’m not alone”), rolling with the punches (“Something made me laugh/But the punchline was me/Took too long to find out/What we take seriously/And what’s a joke”) and acknowledging “Some we lose/Some we win”. A similar sentiment informs With Only You (“In the truth/In the trench/Lose some battles/Gain some sense”) on what is, at heart, a love song (“In the blowing trees/And us underneath/Not lying through our teeth/Nor conspiring/Our love does defy/It’s the makings of real life”) and “Whatever it is/Whatever we do/Wherever we go/What we’re going through/I can take it”. Lockdown brought home just how much we need others and the dangers of depression sparked by isolation, finding expression here in the solo fingerpicked acoustic blues Sinking In, the original 4-track demo, which balances “I won’t call you when I’m alone/And too lonely, lonely/It’s sinking in/Where it’s going/And where it’s been” with “Death walks the plank of cold/And I shiver, shiver/But you warm me through/By the fire/And if I need to/It’s safe to cry here”. It comes to a close with, firstly, the post-breakup To Ramona-like sway-along A Page You’ve Turned, sketching an urban backdrop (“City sirens a-cryin’/Screeching skidding tires/But rent is cheap on the strip”) and again the toll of isolation and loneliness (“Nighthawks and owls/Whistle blowing fowls/ Misdemeanors and fat lips/Things ain’t quiet but that’s the way I like it/So I don’t feel so alone/In our broken home”), as, noting that “Ghosts don’t get second chances”, the narrator unfolds the despair that’s consumed him (“Heartbreak has changed me/Made me go more crazy… Bad year, ain’t working/Been thinking about stealing/Sold everything that I owned/In our broken home”). Finally, accompanied on vocals by Brock, there’s the strummed Protector that draws on the imagery of a barroom shootout (“Give my love to everyone/I’m going out in style/Won’t reach for this gun/The soul of a poet/Never stands a chance/With a man full of anger/Who won’t consider consequence”) for the end of a relationship (“I won’t reach for this holster/’Cause it ain’t any good/If I lay down my arms/And be a slave to your words”) as he sings how he’s “Sipping on my last pint/Tipping on my last bill/In a cozy dim lit bar/Testing my will/’Cause I’m too weak with my left/Too slow with my right/I think I love too much/To win this fight tonight”. Inarguably downbeat, it charts a musical and personal journey that he says he hopes listeners will feel they can share. These are songs that give you the strength to come through on the other side.
Track List:
1. Nothing Pressing (3:59)
2. Kill It With Kindness (2:19)
3. Recluse Revisions (3:31)
4. Wait a Little Longer (2:29)
5. Still Patience (3:37)
6. Underground Blues (3:07)
7. Have You Ever Been Happy? (3:18)
8. With Only You (2:55)
9. Sinking In (3:15)
10. A Page You've Turned (2:58)
11. Protector (3:53)
Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock
Country: Canada
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
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