Photo courtesy of Warner Music Canada
On one level, the passage of time tells a version of Ron Sexsmith?s story: 12 albums ? 13, if you count the Rarities collection ? spread over 22 years. The once and future king of contemporary songwriters, acclaimed by critics, but struggling in the marketplace, now seriously pushing 50.
And as the months and years fly by ? a subtext not ignored in the lyrics of Sexsmith?s typically wonderful new disc ? it becomes ever more difficult to say anything new or insightful about his art.
Fellow songwriters and reviewers have waxed poetic about Sexsmith?s formidable gifts for a couple of decades, until even a Thesaurus can?t help. Younger writers like Ed Sheeran and Jason Mraz ? who would be unworthy of holding Sexsmith?s pen ? go platinum. Formulaic song-doctoring by committee fills the charts. Sexsmith himself adopts a demeanour of resignation and tosses off another modest masterpiece. Rinse and repeat.
The title of the new disc says it all: Sexsmith is in it for the long haul. And if the world has to wait for a 2030 issue of Mojo or Uncut ? or whatever later replaces those arbiters of historical pop greatness ? to run a breathless 12-page retrospective on a life and work filled with buried treasures, what control do we have over that?
So to return to the moment, yes, of course, it?s ?merely? another great Sexsmith album. But it?s actually even a shade better than the last couple of discs, because it reunites the artist with Mitchell Froom, who truly should be the only producer allowed to work with him.
Ignoring recent well-intentioned, but pointless attempts to make Sexsmith sound punchier or more contemporary ? it?s the songs, stupid ? Froom sets most of these 12 beauties in a bed of lightly orchestrated strings and woodwinds, the better to bring out their melodic kinship to the work of Sexsmith?s idols Burt Bacharach, Harry Nilsson and Ray Davies.
The stately, heart-tugging French horn that introduces the disc?s gorgeous opener, Nowhere to Go, speaks volumes about music lifting the protagonist out of despair. And so does the sly, understated brass in the almost funky Snake Road, the whisper of steel guitar in the reflective Lost In Thought, written in the style of a would-be standard, and the woozy horns in Me Myself and Wine, an atypical but amusing celebration of boozing.
Using a session band of heavy hitters including Pete Thomas and Davey Faragher of Elvis Costello?s band the Imposters, as well as Greg Leisz, Froom and Sexsmith evoke the refreshing airiness that dazzled listeners on Sexsmith?s first three major-label discs, which Froom also helmed or co-produced (he returned for Time Being in 2006). Clown in Broad Daylight, from the brilliant Other Songs, for example, has a cousin in the light and breezy Back of My Hand.
Forever Endeavour is soaked in favourite Sexsmith themes, tackled with the usual disarming plainspokeness. He sings here of the inevitability of regret, love?s redeeming power and the fragility of life (a cancer scare Sexsmith went through in 2011 is reflected in many of the songs, notably the sweet, melancholy, melodically rich Deepens With Time and The Morning Light).
?If I lose all track of time/ It?s no skin off my back/ Cos I?m not going anywhere/ So I know I won?t be late,? Sexsmith sings in Back of My Hand. The passage of time slows us all down. As the singer has clearly learned, though, the trick and the triumph ?is to keep going.
Rating: **** and 1/2
Podworthy: Nowhere to Go
Forever Endeavour will be available Feb. 5. Click here to hear a stream of the album until Feb. 4.
And here is the lyric video for Nowhere to Go:
Bernard Perusse
Twitter: @bernieperusse
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