Let Ronald Eldon Sexsmith comfort you in these dark times...

I sure hope you have already heard of Ron Sexsmith, but unfortunately, even if you know him, and I know him, we are still too few. Sexsmith is one of the best damn songwriters of the last thirty five freakin' years, he's continuing toiling away, releasing fine record upon fine record, and yet he's still not a household name after all of these years. 

In some ways, I can almost see the wherefor and the why. As excellent as his records are - and no Sexsmith album I ever heard was less than very good - there aren't very often songs that grab the listener in the way most charts songs do. Sexsmith doesn't write hooks, he writes songs. There is nothing pandering to his art. I can almost hear the old school record company man: 'That's all very nice, Ron, but we don't really hear a single here.' And often they don't. Sexsmith's work is all subtlety, and well, how often does subtlety make it into the charts?

Sexsmith has made many fine albums, so there is an ample choice of quality, but the One Buck Record of the day is one of my favorite of his. Cobblestone Runway also happened to be the first album of Sexsmith I owned and loved. It is a bit of a rarity in Sexsmith's discography as it has some subtle electronic flourishes that were on vogue at the time - the equally subtly electronically enhanced "Sea Change" by Beck and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco - both also total classics - came out at around the same time.

Mostly, these songs are an exercise in comforting people. I don't know who Sexsmith adressed these songs to, but they speak to me like they speak to whoever he meant them for. You don't even need to feel particularly down to want to listen to these. Anyone can need a bit of uplift, anytime, and when Sexsmith opens the album, promising "your heart will rise again in its former glory", you can't not feel uplifted, elevated, at least a little bit. 

And boy do we need some uplift in these dark times when the orange sex offender with the maturity, manners and verbiage of a six year old, his weird redneck friend and a gonzo nationalist afrikaner try to run the world. Sexsmith obviously hasn't written those songs for these times, but they fit: "The skies are grey for miles around", he laments on "The Least I Can Do", "Though the sun tried hard to break through the clouds. While the sun is trying, the least that I can do is to keep on rising and shining my light on you". The song after, we're assured that "God Loves Everyone". It's cold and dark out there, and maybe even here, but Sexsmith's voice and words keep us warm. 

This version of Cobblestone Runway is very slightly reworked: I never liked the dance beats of "Dragonfly On Bay Street" that feel incongruous and take me out of the album when they come up, so that dragonfly has left the runway. What's left is eleven quality tracks, including two versions of the ultralovely "Gold In The Hills", the second one a duet with Chris Martin of Coldplay, back when he was...well, not cool exactly, but also not insufferable yet.   

So, if you know Sexsmith, use this as a pretext to spin one of his best, and if you don't, go and discover one of Canada's treasures. Guaranteed without tariffs here on One Buck Records! Go and discover, folks, as there is gold in them hills...