Canadian craftsman Ron Sexsmith is back in blue with that difficult fourth album. Entitled Blue Boy and produced in Nashville by Steve Earle, it's a rather different sounding Sexsmith record - some would say a brave departure from the gentle ballads which have garnered praise from the likes of McCartney and Costello. That said, it's not entirely different. It won't come as a major shock to Sexsmith fans, but it will perhaps reveal another side of this quietest of men.
The catalyst has undoubtedly been the presence of Steve Earle at the production desk. A long-time fan of Sexsmith, he came into the frame after Daniel Lanois was detained longer than expected on U2 duty in Dublin. What Lanois might have done with a Sexsmith set amounts to intriguing speculation, but it does seem a safe bet that he, like Mitchell Froom (who produced all the previous records), might have focused on the Sexsmith we all know and love - mellow, heartbreaking and slow. Earle, however, decided that the best policy was to crank things up - just a little.
"Well, Mitchell felt that my voice was never quite suited to all that, but Steve was determined to make a little more noise," Sexsmith says. "He had seen me play with my band, The Uncool, back in 1988 and he was wondering why I hadn't made a record like that. Steve's a rocking guy and he would say: `Well, you know, there's a way this song could go, if you're open to it.' So I kind of had to put my trust in him. I guess I had a preconception that I was going to make a country record - but when I got down to the studio, the whole place was wall-to-wall Beatles. I hope people don't drive off the road when they hear it."
And so, on Blue Boy, we hear Ron Sexsmith getting funky. We even hear some ska and, while the ballads are there too, these are certainly new sounds to most of Sexsmith's fans. But perhaps that's to forget that back in St Catherine's, Ontario, the younger Ron Sexsmith was mostly playing songs by The Kinks and The Who, and the rest of his musical hinterland was as much Curtis Mayfield and Bill Withers as it was Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen. So perhaps he too, and not just Steve Earle, felt it was time to turn it up and shake it down. But, that said, there's no real reason to panic. Sexsmith's particular genius is for writing near-perfect songs, and Blue Boy certainly has a few on board.
"I guess I still have an old-fashioned approach. I want the song to have a very definite melody and I want the words to work with it as perfectly as possible," Sexsmith explains. "These days, the kind of song that I'm trying to write is kind of non-existent. Or at least sometimes I feel that it's an endangered species and I'm trying to protect it - this idea of what a good song should be."
This has been the difficult fourth album in more ways than one. With its usual mixture of story songs, the probably autobiographical and the definitely autobiographical, the listener is perhaps left wondering just how things might be with Ron. And, in truth, they haven't been that good. Having recently split with his long-time partner, he is now living in a different house and seeing his children at the weekends. It has been what he describes as "a crazy year" and it might well have made for an over-emotional record to be regretted at leisure. But Sexsmith feels happy that the lyrical content of Blue Boy is considered and correct.
"We split up last fall and it was all going on while I made this record. There's a bit of it in Thirsty Love and Just My Heart Talking, but there's also a song called Don't Ask Why which comes from happier times," he says. "In fact, the last record was a much sadder record because it was made during the heart of the problems we were having and there are songs on that record where, for the first time, I wasn't able to hide things any more.
"But it's always a tricky thing with songs, because you don't want it to be a diary for everyone to read. And while in the past I've had to make things a little more vague, now I want to write really directly. I don't want to tiptoe if possible. I'd like to be more of an open book."
BUT for all the praise with which he has been showered since his first major release back in 1995, Sexsmith is still trying to make that crucial breakthrough. Being the critics' darling counts for nothing much in the commercial bear-pit of the music industry and, despite a truly loyal following, Sexsmith is still having to push hard just to keep in the frame. Perhaps most relief and encouragement comes from the fact that his songs have been covered by other, higher-profile artists, something which has almost certainly given him more survival time and, presumably, some sort of financial boost. And for the concerned songwriter there is also that added bonus of hearing a treasured song suddenly emerge from the mouth of a stranger.
"It's just starting to happen now," Sexsmith says. "When I heard the Rod Stewart version of Secret Heart, I was listening carefully to little things and thinking `oh I wish he hadn't done that' and I was kind of hard on it. But I really liked the Anne Sophie Von Otter version of April After All and I was really proud because you want your song to have a life without you in a way. In fact, that's what it's all about. I was at a friend's house recently and he had a Stephen Foster songbook - every one of them was great and we just sat there singing all these songs and it kind of made things clear for me. People these days make great recordings, but sometimes you hear the recordings but don't always hear the songs. Songs are moments in time and anything that's on my record - well, that's just how it sounded on that day. You really do have to let them go."
Sexsmith fans have for the past six years been nothing short of evangelical about spreading the word. There is a strong faith there that, one day, he will come to be regarded as one of the very best - even if top 20 playlists remain distant and inaccessible territory. But Sexsmith's own heroes are people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young and he quietly hopes to emulate their example of making records, with credibility, for as long as they want. It's a wise approach too, because there's nothing about what Ron Sexsmith does that could be classified as either in or out of fashion. Being a pop star is neither here nor there for him.
"I think I knew that when I got signed," he says. "I was 31 when my first record came out and although I'm not old, what goes on radio is a whole other world. It has gotten much more juvenile, so I don't really have great expectations about any of that. But then there are lots of people who have had million-selling records but have totally disappeared off the face of the earth. And I'm happier with what I'm doing.
"There are people rooting for me and I've just got to try to keep the quality up so I can continue. That's all that's really kept me here - it's just been about the music and people saying nice things. So, yeah, I'm definitely in for the long haul."
Ron Sexsmith's new album, Blue Boy, is out on June 1st on Solid Records