Ron Sexsmith’s new album is his best received in years – but despite it being accessible and melodic, he has his doubts
WHAT ARE WE going to do about Ron Sexsmith? If he were a serial bridegroom he’d have been jilted at the altar at least five times by now. Which is one way of implying that while his several albums over the past 10 years or so have been critically praised (sometimes to the hilt) their sales have never been enough to lift the naturally shy Canadian singer-songwriter out of a default despondent mood.
While his face displays, as always, it seems, a certain cherubic look, behind the facade is a man with nagging doubts, and while his new album – the ridiculously accessible and melodic Long Player Late Bloomer– is his best received in years, he still harbours feelings of inadequacy. He was, he says, so frustrated with his two most recent albums (2006's Time Beingand 2008's Exit Strategy of the Soul) virtually disappearing at their respective time of release that he almost gave up the ghost.
The topic of critically appraised albums dying a silent death, however, is a hoary one, isn't it? "I think it tends to bother people around me rather than it does myself," admits Sexsmith, talking from Los Angeles where he is about to make an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "I didn't set out to be a cult artist — all my heroes were people like Elton John, who made good albums and who were also very successful.
"I was 31 when my first record came out, so I was grateful to get in the door and have even half a career. I'm always trying to reach people with my music, but a lot of it is out of my hands, in terms of what the radio plays or what the record company does. With Time Beingand Exit Strategy of the SoulI felt I was letting people down. You know, people are rooting for me, and I always seem to strike out with my records. I can take some of the blame for that, I suppose. I feel grateful that I have a following, and I'm always trying with each record to break out. Not because I want to be rich and famous, but I just want the music to be heard." Long Player Late Bloomerseems to be getting played and heard far more than his previous work. Certainly, it is less enmeshed in the melancholy singer-songwriter category that Sexsmith seemed forever to be defined by: it unashamedly blends doughty, guitar-driven power pop and stronger vocals with a full-on, full band feel.
“It isn’t a shy record,” says Sexsmith, characteristically understating the facts. “This record is very much for being played on the radio. I grew up with late-1960s, early-1970s music, when everything was very melodic on the radio. That is kinda where my head is at, but I think that that music is also the type of music that many people are looking for these days – it isn’t music you’ll find in clubland.
“Not to put anyone down, but a lot of what you hear on the radio these days is very dance oriented, juvenile, kind of robotic. Who does my music appeal to? Obviously people of my generation will get me easier than people who are into, say, Lady Gaga.”
On the go more than 20 years now, the trajectory of Sexsmith's recording career has been rugged, at the very least. His first collection of songs was (originally) the cassette-only release, Grand Opera Lane. That itself took a few years to make, he glumly recalls, because the guy who produced it was doing other projects and "I was hardly a priority".
He says, with a measure of regret and amusement (honed to perfection, no doubt, by years of struggle) that when it finally came out, everyone in Canada turned it down.
“I thought it was back to the drawing board, but then a year later Geffen Records called me – the cassette tape had somehow made its way to Los Angeles. So I was signed, eventually, and I was just so relieved. At this time I was in my late twenties, and I was thinking that music wasn’t going to happen. But at the back of your head, there’s this crazy idea that it was meant to happen, that it’s fate, or something like that. So you stick with it, and thankfully I didn’t pack it in.”
Is it as fulfilling now as it has always been? It is that and more, says Sexsmith, simply because he loves it so much. "Even if I weren't able to write any more music I'd sing other people's songs. Writing songs is what I do, though, and when I'm not doing it I feel useless and miserable." Sexsmith's mood is definitely up on Long Player Late Bloomer– there is nothing useless or miserable about it, but rather the feeling that a new lease of life is his for the taking. There have been periods in his career, he says, where he thought things were going in the right direction only for them to circle around a drain and disappear.
Yet even this has a silver lining, he laughs. “As a songwriter, you take this sense of disillusionment, you turn it into songs, and you can cancel out your mood just by writing about it. It’s something of a vicious circle, I suppose. But feeling depressed, disillusioned and lonely – that’s songwriting gold!”
Long Player Late Bloomeris on release through Cooking Vinyl;
Ron Sexsmith will be touring Ireland in June
