RON SEXSMITH
Cobblestone Runway
Linus/Warner
· Ron Sexsmith's new album, the follow-up to Blue Boy, is coupled with a disc of the demo-come-album Grand Opera Lane from the late 1980s.
· Sexsmith will perform live, in concert, at Liberty Lounge on Thursday, September 26.
The juxtaposition of St. Catherine native Ron Sexsmith’s early material with his most recent release, Cobblestone Runway, provides an intriguing aural texture. While his early work on Grand Opera Lane was sprinkled with stardust from producer Bob Wiseman’s wand, Sexsmith’s shininess behind the ears was both endearing and annoying. At times Grand Opera Lane showed the glimmer of wit and promise that the singer-songwriter has nurtured on subsequent albums, and the sound trips out prettily onto an experimental highway painted firmly with Wiseman’s dotted line of anti-convention. But too often the sound slid into a fey parade, and Sexsmith didn’t yet know how to twist his cliches into a knot.
Cobblestone Runway twists those cliches, squeezes them, and wrings out the juice. The sound, though not as experimental (Sexsmith admits that he was in danger of being a critics’ darling, which is almost universally the commercial kiss of death), still provides a texture that delivers pleasing variety for the ears, like the cobblestones of the title. In spite of the fact that Paul McCartney and Sheryl Crowe are apparently fans of Sexsmith (I don’t know if I’d be braggin’ ’bout that), the album manages, most of the time, to rise above mediocrity.
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