Canadian Ron Sexsmith’s previous visit to London was a multifaceted one. He and his band were recording at Eastcote Studios, and while there, they played a show at the showbiz-drenched, regal hangout, the London Palladium. En route to the gig, Ron’s drummer Don Kerr noted a ‘Hanover Terrace’ landmark and signage, which was duly re-christened ‘Hangover Terrace’. This rebranded moniker became almost immediately the title of Sexsmith’s eighteenth studio-based long player, and some seven months later, with the record finished and ready for an August timed release, Ron was back in the capital in solo form (at the very un-regal darkened diminutive surroundings of the Water Rats in Kings Cross) for its debut live airing. That being said, “I’d like to start with a few oldies to settle the nerves”, quipped Sexsmith upon his stage arrival and he indeed thus did. ‘There’s a Rhythm’, ‘Imaginary Friends’ and ‘These Days’ from the back catalogue were played, and at 61 years of age, his smoothly rich vocal tones show no signs of decaying.
Onto the new songs then, and Sexsmith was keen to convey that the “Hangover” album title was not so much about alcohol but more apropos of recent post-Covid times. Whilst these acoustic airings had the ever-melodic and contemplative hallmarks of his overall output, perhaps the new record leans lyrically a little wistfully to his formative years. ‘Cigarette and Cocktail’ painted a familiar picture of a seventies social scene (“cigarette in one hand, cocktail in the other”) while ‘Camelot Towers’ echoed back to a similar era and the perhaps overly imaginative place names given to the then new social housing schemes. The song, Sexsmith explained, had a double-edged poignancy in light of modern Canada’s lack of low-cost housing, and his home country’s state of things was again present in ‘Please Don’t Tell Me Why’, a tale of political uncertainties in the current age. ‘When Will The Morning Come’ set a story of recent bereavement, and the following tune, ‘Angel On My Shoulder’, acted as an almost mantra-like remedy that perhaps everything will be alright in the end.
“And now for the hits you all grew up with”, declared Sexsmith in his typically wry and self-deprecating style and with that, he launched into the more familiar waters of ‘Strawberry Blonde’, ‘Brandy Alexander’ and ‘Gold in Them Hills’. There was a nod to Steve Earle, producer of ‘That’s Just My Heart Talkin’, and though the Bob Rock produced ‘Get in Line’ should in theory have sounded markedly different, it, of course, did not, such is Sexsmith’s defined songwriting style. For the encore, Sexsmith chose an endearing cover of Perry Como’s ‘It’s Impossible’, and he closed the set with an ever-personable rendition of ‘Thinking Out Loud’.
Of the new material, the track ‘Don’t Lose Sight’ with its lyrically familiar tales of trials and tribulations was possibly the most immediately recognisable, but one track, ‘Damn Well Please’ perhaps stood out from the others, solely for the fact that its audience-friendly tales of singular empowerment almost sways into an unfamiliar sing-along territory. “I can be the star of my own show”, proclaims Sexsmith in the song’s chorus. Whether joking or not, he remains the star of his own show and a great one it still is.
