WE DON’T SEE Ron Sexsmith around these parts all that often. It’s not that he has a problem with Australia and New Zealand – we’re nice people, he’ll tell you, and while he’s not exactly Bryan Adams or Drake or Grimes level sales-wise, he’s got fans here in decent numbers for a Canadian singer/songwriter whose style is classicist pop, whose influences are Ray Davies, Paul McCartney and Gordon Lightfoot, whose beats are rhythmic but not tectonic.

And they’re bloody good songs too. Take last year’s bright-eyed Hangover Terrace for example. Or 2020’s mod-ish Hermitage, the bolder tones of 2011’s Long Player Late Bloomer, 1995’s rich-sounding, close-fitting, Elvis Costello-endorsed self-titled record that broke his career open, or the soft bruises of 2001’s Blue Boy. For a start.