Despite the playful implication of its title, Ron Sexsmith’s Other Songs was far from a sophomore slump. I’d rank it up there as one of his two or three best albums.
It features several beautiful little slices of life, such as ‘Pretty Little Cemetery,’ in which a father and son share a moment while walking through a cemetery on vacation, and ‘Strawberry Blonde,’ in which the singer spots a childhood crush on a bus years later.
I imagine today’s song came to Sexsmith all at once after spotting a clown in broad daylight at a car wash — an odd, incongruous image that made him smile. And he turned that into a couple of minutes of jaunty delight, adding in a horn part that’s appropriate to the circus theme.
