Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. (Psalms 51:6)
I remember when I first heard Ron Sexsmith; not in a JFK-getting-shot sense, but generally that it was in the first half of the 1990s and the song was Secret Heart. It seemed like a good song, and the singer of it seemed likely to be a solid sort. Some people were saying that he was “the new Bob Dylan.” Well, just like all the other new Bob Dylans, he was nothing of the kind and that manner of talk didn’t help him; he was, instead, the current Ron Sexsmith. And that wasn’t such a bad thing at all. Sexsmith is a (Canadian) songwriter with a gift for an instantly seductive pop/folk/rock melody, a facile way with a lyrical narrative and the ability to produce really charming and sometimes deeply poignant turns-of-phrase. Better yet, he can combine all those elements into a whole that seems utterly unforced. (That seamless combination may be the toughest trick for would-be pop songwriters — not to mention some practicing ones.) He’s essentially a confessional-type songwriter, but one who generally avoids tripping into the excessively lugubrious or precious. Continue reading “Ron Sexsmith: Long Player Late Bloomer“