The train song is one of the most time-tested traditions in North American music. Yet when it’s done right, it feels just as fresh and affecting as the very first time an itinerant bluesman rode the rails. The proud tradition continues in “Last Train Home,” the exquisitely mournful title track to Niagara Falls singer-songwriter Evan Rotella’s sophomore album.

Late-hour introspection of the kind only a vagabond lifestyle can induce, the song finds our hero heading back from another night on the eternal road, pondering what he’s learned and what’s been lost to him. Rotella’s voice crackles with self-recognition as he surveys the “thieves and cheats” that are sharing the ride with him, the “heroes and saints” who are his fellow passengers on a trip whose rituals are as routine as it is outcome is unknown.