An eclectic EP of songs that didn’t make Leger’s previous albums showcasing the man and his music.
Canadian singer-songwriter Jerry Leger has been around for a while. His first album came out back in 2005 and he’s been releasing them at the rate of almost one a year ever since. His last three major albums have been on Cowboy Junkies’ Latent Recordings label and produced by the band’s Michael Timmins. Now on the same label he’s released an EP of songs that didn’t make it onto previous albums. As Leger says: “These are top-shelf songs; they weren’t left off the albums because of their quality. Deciding which tracks make up an album can be very difficult and tricky. You have to take into account flow and cohesion. Sometimes the best songs are the ones that don’t make the final cut”.
The EP starts with ‘Mean Payola’ an out-and-out rocker that has a retro feel to it with its fuzz-box guitar and what sounds like a Farfisa keyboard soloing between verses. To quote Leger: “This was recorded for last year’s album Nothing Pressing but didn’t fit. It’s a cool track and I wanted to get a kind of “Runaway” (Del Shannon) keyboard sound in the break but we got something different”. In it he pleads in desperation: ‘Wolfman Jack I need you, to play my records’.
The second track is ‘We’re A Mess’ a gentle ballad in which he sings ‘I’m lost on the river, no love, got no trust’. Leger states the song is: “An outtake from 2014’s ‘Early Riser’, this is one that I dusted off and wondered why it didn’t go on the record. Maybe I thought it was too much of a downer”.
This is followed by ‘What Baby Wants’ an up-tempo track with heavy guitars and a strong backbeat. Leger writes about the song “From the ‘Nonsense’ sessions for 2017’s’ Nonsense and Heartache’. I had forgotten about this version but it’s ferocious!”
The final track of the four is ‘And The Time Flew By’. It has a melancholic, gentle country feel to it with some delightful fiddle and steel guitar backing Leger’s mournful vocals. In it he sings ‘Gone way too soon, but he always knew, the time flew by’. As Leger says, “We tried this for 2019’s ‘Time Out For Tomorrow’ but it didn’t seem to live in that world of songs. It always felt special to me though, so I kept it in the back of my mind”.
If you don’t know Jerry Leger’s music, then this EP is a good way to sample some of his prolific output. His voice has a world-weary, elegiac feel to it and at times has a similar tone and timbre as Willie Nile. To quote Ron Sexsmith, “Jerry Leger has that spark in him that all the great songwriters have. He’s the real deal”.
