He’s baaaack!

Just when you thought he was out, I pull him back IN!

Don’t worry, anti-Sexsmith heathens, this is just a bit of housekeeping. I haven’t posted a review of Ron Sexsmith’s latest album, Long Player Late Bloomer, and this post will serve in that capacity.

Despite the Sexsmith antagonism I heard from the more vocal segment of my readership, the Ron Sexsmith Weekends actually did quite well traffic-wise, and toward the end generated some of my most impassioned comments from a fan base that discovered the series too late.

I’m still rather shocked that Sexsmith’s music didn’t light a fire under my regular readers. Some artists I realize will appeal to a niche audience — I wouldn’t throw Rufus Wainwright or Bob Dylan out there with the expectation that everybody would hum along merrily. But Sexsmith, especially in recent years, has a sound and sensibility that lends itself to universal appeal.

That Sexsmith has eluded that universal appeal, or really any sort of mainstream success at all, is a sad mystery.

Long Player Late Bloomer is perhaps Sexsmith’s finest album yet. The songwriting is as stellar as ever but this time around he turned the production duties over to Bob Rock (best known for his work with heavy metal bands Metallica and Motley Crue) and the result is his best-sounding work to date. Who knew that the studio wizard behind Metallica could craft such a delicately muscular (or muscularly delicate) batch of songs?

Sexsmith’s underdog status informs his lyrics… he writes about life’s losers, or rather the people who would be life’s losers if they didn’t keep getting off the mat and trying to win. ‘Michael and His Dad‘ depicts a widowed father and his son dealing with unemployment. The song ends on an uplifting note, as they “head towards the sandbox in the playground, and there a castle’s made for two… the sun is high, the sky is blue.”

The whole album is infused with that spirit — hope in the face of unending darkness. In my favorite track, ”Believe It When I See It,’ Sexsmith dismisses the ideas of heaven, peace and love in the supremely catchy chorus: “If seeing is believing, I’ll believe it when I see it with my own two eyes.” But in the song’s final verse, he suggests that he’s going to keep looking: “When faced with a difficult decision, would you listen to your heart or mind? We’re bound to waste all our free will and ambition if we got no vision and we got no spine.”

In ‘Late Bloomer,’ Sexsmith compares himself to a long-playing album, taking his time to get where he wants to be. “I’m a late bloomer, I’m a slow learner, and I’ve turned the record over. I’m a long player, my song is my saviour, I’ve got to raise it up as far as my spirit can reach.”

Indeed, Sexsmith is as far as you can imagine from the quick download, 99-cent single culture that has overtaken the music industry. By now it’s a given that he’ll never achieve that kind of popularity. But if he keeps releasing albums like this one he’ll achieve something far more meaningful, raising the spirits of his fans right up there with him.