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Song of the Day #1,045: ‘Seem to Recall’ – Ron Sexsmith

Ron Sexsmith has borrowed from Bob Dylan the tendency to put his strongest songs at the end of his albums. Sexsmith usually ends his records with a romantic ballad (I mentioned Brad Paisley recently as an expert modern-day writer of love songs, and Sexsmith shares the talent).

‘April After All,’ the closing track on Other Songs, is particularly lovely, the sort of song that could have become a standard if Sexsmith was around 50 years ago.

‘Seem to Recall,’ the last song on Whereabouts, is my favorite track from that album. It’s about looking back with longing and regret.

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Song of the Day #1,044: ‘The Idiot Boy’ – Ron Sexsmith

Ron Sexsmith’s third album, 1999’s Whereabouts, featured slicker production than his first two and was a little more adventurous musically. On the whole, I like the songs a little less than the earlier material, but that’s nitpicking.

References to God show up a lot in Sexsmith’s work, and I’m not sure if he’s a practicing Christian or if he just likes the imagery (in the way that artists such as Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen find poetry in religious language). I’m exposing my religious bigotry by stating that I hope it’s the latter.

Today’s song is more an indictment of man than a celebration of God.

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Song of the Day #1,043: ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ – The Velvet Underground

While choosing songs for two straight weeks of covers, I reflected back on R.E.M.’s version of this Velvet Underground classic. But rather than post their version, I’m reaching back to the original.

I didn’t know anything at all about The Velvet Underground before I heard R.E.M.’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes,’ released on their album of B-sides and outtakes, Dead Letter Office. If you’d asked me, I would have predicted they had more of a hard rock sound.

And they did, at times, but when I tracked down their self-titled album I discovered that they also could be incredibly tender.

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Song of the Day #1,041: ‘Flowers in the Window’ – Travis

It’s funny how sometimes you lose track of an artist. As a rule, I buy pretty much every new release by the musicians in my collection, the exceptions being those artists who proved to have only one or two strong albums among many. But in those cases, I usually came to that conclusion after trying to keep up with their output and realizing I was seeing diminishing returns.

Sometimes, though, I’ll be right there with a band or singer and then somehow lose sight of them. I owned and loved every Dar Williams album, for example, when one day I realized she’d released two more records without me even knowing.

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