Thirty Year Run

Album Review

From the instrumentation, including pedal steel, fiddle, and mandolin, to the twang in Trevor Alguire's tenor voice, the music on the singer/songwriter's second solo album, Thirty Year Run, sounds Southern. But it turns out that this is music from the south of Ontario, not below the Mason-Dixon Line. Nevertheless, Alguire exhibits rural values of nostalgia for old times, as well as a sense of the vagaries of love, singing over country/folk/rock arrangements that rev up occasionally to rockabilly ("Letting You In") and the sort of ‘50s rock & roll played by Carl Perkins ("The One"). Still, developing independently of the Nashville center of American country music, Alguire comes off as somewhat old-fashioned musically and unfocused lyrically. Were he to move to Nashville and start taking songwriting sessions, his collaborators probably would help sharpen his lyrics, but also adapt them to more conventional formulas. On the other hand, he lacks the idiosyncratic individuality of maverick Southern singer/songwriters like Steve Earle (whom he recalls somewhat in his phrasing), and that may suggest a possible sharpening of a different sort. In any case, this second album reveals a talent that hasn't quite come into its prime yet, perhaps because Alguire is settling for being a good singer/songwriter when, with a little more work, he could be a better one.