Like Freedy Johnston and Aimee Mann, Ron Sexsmith is one of those below-the-radar singer/songwriters trumpeted by critics and musicians indignant that the songwriter isn't a star already, dammit. Despite high-profile admirers like Elvis Costello and six highly praised albums on three labels, Sexsmith's career has maintained a steady trajectory, neither sinking toward Johnston's obscurity nor rising to Mann's cult status.
Retriever is his sixth album in a not quite a decade, and as with each of its predecessors, it's shot through with a shaky optimism to match Sexsmith's boyish looks, light lyrical touch, and charmingly warbly voice. The title suggests someone dumbly loyal, either blessed or afflicted with a canine devotion to a lover, to friends, or to certain romantic ideas about life. In keeping with recent albums like Cobblestone Runway and Blue Boy, producer Martin Terefe sets Sexsmith's voice against a lively full-band sound and bolsters it with dream-weaver string flourishes on "Whatever It Takes" and "Not About to Lose". Generally, the music recalls Jon Brion's work with Mann and Fiona Apple, but is never so garishly ostentatious.
As usual, Retriever also features Sexsmith's studiously plainspoken lyrics, which work hard to reveal a great deal without being stylistically idiosyncratic; he truly wants everyone to sing along to these songs about "happiness" and "sadness." "Hard Bargain" is a surprisingly well-adjusted love song: "How's a guy supposed to fail/ With someone like you around?" If he didn't sound so convincingly smitten, you might think this was a parody of those dark ballads so full of self-loathing and self-absorption. And when he sings lines like, "I've seen tomorrow in her eyes," or, "Dreams come true in heaven all the time," not only is he keeping a straight, wholly unironic face, but he's almost self-consciously risking cornball sentiment. He barely skirts this pitfall, but his willingness to tread that line creates an awkward vulnerability that only makes him more endearing.
On the other hand, can someone be too earnest? The same indefatigable hopefulness that sets Sexsmith apart also makes Retriever a bit tiresome. He instills every song with such gentle, unaffected feeling that Retriever becomes monochromatic, lacking emotional variety. A smirk or even a knowing one-liner would have shaded that directness with some welcome humor.
The overearnestness takes the bite out of more topical songs like "From Now On" and "Wishing Wells", where his uncomplicated lyrics become a liability. Propelled by Ed Harcourt's piano, "From Now On" could even make a rousing theme song for John Kerry's campaign-- especially if the musician-turned-candidate performed it himself. The lyrics, however, are too obvious and hammer-blunt: "We live in times/ Where choice is frowned upon/ Afraid to even raise/ Our voice in song."
But that same song contains another few lines-- "They're in the business of panic and control/ We're in the business of the heart and the soul"--that bristle with heart-on-sleeve righteousness. Sexsmith is always a little more complicated than he appears, and his quiet perseverance-- through each song as well as over the course of his career-- carries its own intricate poetry that belies the understatement of his persona.
