It doesn’t really matter if you don’t know anything of Leeroy Stagger’s decade-long career so far because the road-hardened Alberta singer-songwriter encapsulates it all on his latest album.
Ten Long Years is how long it’s taken ‘to show the bruises’; Angry Young Man explains the kind of guy he used to be and the kind of guy he is now; Dreams cuts to the stark, dark truth of his life on the road.
Elsewhere you get snapshots from the urban wastelands on Living In America and the environmental wastelands on Poison The Well. And there’s a caustic Dylan-esque rant, New Music Biz Blues, where he ends up stuck on a farm instead of Mobile.
He’s travelling a well-worn route with songs that resonate somewhere between Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle. But there’s always room for another perceptive point of view.
