Time to cherish Ron Sexsmith

The show included songs from "Exit Strategy" including "This Is How I Know," which features Sexsmith's faultless ear for a cracking tune and lyrics shot through with a simple, uncomplicated poetry.

On the album, the song is layered with Cuban horns, strings, drums and piano, but on stage Sexsmith performed on acoustic guitar with just two other musicians, on electric guitar and various combinations of bass. The set-up lent the song, and the rest of the set, a wonderfully unpolished beauty, live music at its best.

The self-deprecating singer, a rather shambling, chubby figure with a great shock of bouncing dark hair, possesses one of contemporary music's most distinctive voices, merging the languid with the sweetness of white soul, a trick he pulls off to stunning effect in his anthems of love, lost dreams and the search for grace.

Sexsmith can rock it out when he wants to, as demonstrated by the infectious pop sensibilities and love addiction of "Brandy Alexander" and "One Last Round," the latter a shot across the bows of mass consumerism and economic spoil ("And it's the children who have yet to come/Who'll have to pay our tab").

Sexsmith confessed that he wrote "Whatever It Takes," from "Retriever," with Bill Withers in mind and hopes the US soul legend might record it one day. "We can only dream," he told the audience. Which is just what Sexsmith's music encourages the listener to do: dream.

Withers, too, would be well advised to get in touch with Ron's people. The guy's a writing genius.

When Sexsmith dropped his hand-scrawled set list on the floor, he joked: "There's some good ones on there." He ain't kidding.

It all goes to beg the question: just how many great songs does a chap have to pen and perform before he breaks it big-time? It's time to cherish Mr Sexsmith.