I’ve been a fervent* Sexsmithian ever since I first heard the wonderful cover version of ‘Speaking with the Angel’ recorded by Cry Cry Cry, the supergroup that comprised Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky (still a fabulous version, a fabulous album). So, as you do, I went out and found his first two albums freely available in all good music stores, and amazingly, around about the same time, I found out that he was visiting the UK and making an appearance at a Cardiff venue – the intimate Clwb Ifor Bach. Reader, of course I went: and I was smitten by the songs – here was a guy who knew how to construct neat, melodic 3 ½ minute pop-folk songs that somehow avoided pop cliché and generally said something.
Plus, one had to admit, there was something rather endearing about the man himself: slightly puffier and gawkier than your average rock star, a little bumbling and self effacing perhaps in the introductions, aware of his awkwardness, but ah, as he launched into each song, such surprising delicacy and control of delivery.
I saw him a year later in Cardiff too, somewhere down in the Bay, and here’s a little anecdote of sorts. I got chatting during the interval to another bloke who was on its own – a solicitor, as it happened, who worked in the valleys, and whose musical tastes seemed similar to my own. Part of Ron’s merchandise for the evening included an album he had recorded before launching his solo career: I bought it, of course, and my new solicitor friend also desperately wanted to buy it, but had brought no cash. I bought it for him, quite trusting his claim that he would repay me later. We exchanged addresses and he did indeed repay me later with a bank note in the mail a few days later. Since he also seemed quite a discerning listener, my new musical friend, I sent him, gratis, a CD of some of my own songs. I never heard from him again.
Back to Ron. ‘Gold in them Hills’ comes I think from his fifth album (not counting that juvenilia one mentioned above), the production getting a little classier each time, and, blimey, the album containing two takes of this particular song, one of which featured Coldplay’s very own Chris Martin!
And, come on, it’s a beautiful song. A song I haven’t got tired of, especially since ‘rediscovering’ it as it came up randomly on a play list recently.
Mr Sexsmith often seems to construct songs around a hook that has perhaps the nature of a colloquial idiomatic phrase or aphorism. Nothing wrong with that. And you might think that that approach would lend itself to a certain triteness, but somehow he does generally manage to avoid it. This song is a song about hope, optimism, a kind of encouragement to open-minded attentiveness to possibilities. .. And already as I’m writing this, I can imagine that, especially if you don’t know the song, my description is beginning to make it sound like something rather hackneyed like from an early Hollywood musical (‘forget your troubles come on get happy…etc’) chivvying us on to an always-look-on-the- bright-side joviality. But I don’t get that from the song – for one thing there’s something a little ponderous about the rhythmic accompaniment and the melody that steers it away from tweeness. In its simple way it kind of argues for the transformative power of imagination, openness and even faith. “but if we’d only open our eyes/we’d see… Though our troubles seem like mountains” ‘rainclouds’ can be ‘fountains’. Fanciful optimism maybe, but the second verse continues in the same theme – that while life might slow us down, pull us down even, we might achieve renewed perspective of fresh potentials..” And if we get up off our knees/ Why then we’d see the forest for the trees/ And we’d see the new sun rising/ Over the hills and horizon”. Don’t lose heart- Give the day a chance to start’ he sings first time around (and repeats at the end), then also ‘Don’t lose faith – give the world a chance to say a word or two…’ And of course the repeated ‘Gold..’ cliché remains a neat and clever shorthand for the idea of as yet unencountered treasures…
Massively overbearing motivational jargon we can do without, but I think of this as a more delicate and thoughtful encouragement to a hope-full outlook.
Youll not be surprised, if you’ve read previous posts, that the ‘faith’ aspect of such sentiments resonates. Sexsmith, it would appear from other songs, does have something of a churchy background and it’s not implausible that something of some early years theology (!) informs his lyrical outlook.
*OK,If I’m honest, something of my Sexsmithian devoutness wavered around about the eighth or ninth albums, and there was for me a bit of a sad feeling to the short TV documentary film that was made in conjunction with the recording of the ‘Long Player Late Bloomer’ album, where we saw Sexsmith employing a new ‘heavy rock credentials’ producer in a kind of desperate attempt to finally create a real ’Hit’ album. His demeanour, and some of the personal difficulties which accompanied these efforts, gave the enterprise a melancholy at odds with most of the music. Perhaps that’s just me. But I hope Ronald Eldon Sexsmith has been able to take advantage of his own musical exhortations – ‘don’t lose heart/don’t lose faith/ there’s gold in them hills’. He’s still performing anyway, I see.
Going for a Song 