Forever Endeavour

It’s an album whose ingenuous, often nakedly honest songwriting offers an emotional fist gloved in arrangements of seductive velvet.

The baroque embellishments of Nowhere To Go and Blind Eye are a perfect dressing for the emotions that created them. [Mar 2013, p.104]

Not a single note feels unplanned, yet every lick also comes across as completely natural.

Ron Sexsmith writes with a similar emotional honesty to Mark Everett, but in a more classic style, akin to the moving simplicity of Tim Hardin.

Musically we're in familiar folky, country territory, with long-time collaborator Mitchell Froom on production duties; the bluesy Snake Road and the ethereal string and French horn arrangement on Blind Eye are particularly good.

Highlights include the folky "Sneak Out the Back Door," the jaunty, joyous-sounding, and lovely "Blind Eye" (which sounds just a little bit like vintage Donovan without the hippy-dippy lyrics), and the oddly hopeful (for Sexsmith, anyway) "Life After a Broken Heart," although the whole album feels like a uniform meditation on aging, mortality, and the affirming wish to go forward in spite of what's been.

Forever Endeavour is indeed a humble record, but as with its touchstones, the album's power lies in its simplicity.

Overall, though, the album is crisp and straightforward, making Forever Endeavor a big step toward Sexsmith gaining household-name status.

A delicate, moving album. [Mar 2013, p.80]

Forever Endeavour may be as solid a record as he’s has ever made, but it’s also more of the same, a retrenching rather than an expansion of his capabilities.

Ultimately, Forever Endeavour is a slight piece of work but its modesty proves both charming and refreshing overall.