Ron Sexsmith – Cobblestone Runway

When this baby-faced Canadian teamed with producers Steve Earle and Ray Kennedy for 2001’s Blue Boy, the biggest surprise was the twangtrust’s minimal imprint on the music. Where Earle traditionally makes his presence felt on anything he touches, the producers approached the purity of Sexsmith’s songcraft as if it were a delicate vase.

By contrast, Cobblestone Runway finds Sweden’s Martin Terefe and his homeland musicians scribbling their sonic signatures all over the sessions, as if tagging the tracks with aural graffiti. Yet the risk of overproduction reaps rewards on Sexsmith’s most fully realized song cycle to date, as the variety of synthesizer, strings and vocal harmonies enhance the wobbly tenor and bittersweet reveries that remain his musical trademark.

It helps that the songwriter is in particularly fertile form, the dissolution of his 15-year marriage sparking musical meditations on redemptive grace, perseverance and the little things that make such a big difference in life. From the ethereal choir and psychedelic swirls that turn “Least That I Can Do” into a secular hymn, to the disco groove and funk underpinnings of the spiritual autobiography “Dragonfly On Bay Street”, to the synthesized celeste and strings that punctuate “God Takes Everyone”, to the McCartneyesque lilt (and Abbey Road bass line) of “The Less I Know”, every arrangement shows the same attention to detail that Sexsmith applies to his lyrics.

Having been championed by Elvis Costello, covered by Rod Stewart (“Secret Heart”), invited to tour with Lucinda Williams and compared with everyone from Tim Hardin to Harry Nilsson to the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Sexsmith benefits here from the vocal support of Coldplay’s Chris Martin on the remix of the album’s centerpiece, “Gold In Them Hills”. Such big-name associations might lead listeners to Sexsmith’s music, but it’s the subtlety of his musical enchantment that will keep them there.