​Singers’ songwriter has lost none of his passion

“This is the fourth album I’ve done with Martin and I’ve always enjoyed working with him because he’s very free in the studio,” Sexsmith says. “Producers all have their own bag of tricks.

“Some are more methodical; they want to have all the arrangements locked down before they go in. Martin is very free. We get in there and start playing the song, trying a few different ways until we get something that feels like ‘that’s the record’.”

Sexsmith is a vehemently independent songwriter, employing a ‘no co-writing’ rule on all of his records. Terefe fits into the operation by helping to organise his thoughts, and by calling on skilled players to join sessions.

“Since my third or fourth album, I’ve had pretty strong opinions too about how the record should sound,” Sexsmith says.

“But it is a collaboration, the production aspect. I don’t totally give my babies up for adoption. We get in there and we agree on a certain approach, and I always get the final say.

“But I do want a producer who has opinions and bold ideas. Sometimes I’ll have to be dragged along or sometimes I’ll have to be convinced. There is a trust there and this is the fourth record I’ve made with [Martin] so I trust his judgement.”

It was Sexsmith’s first time recording an album in England since 2007. He describes himself as a compulsive person in need of a routine. To that end, he set up camp in a central hotel within walking distance of the studio, taking the same footpaths and stopping at the same café on his way in each morning.

“There’s comfort in that for me,” he says. “It allows me to be able to think about the record and the songs.”

The singer/songwriter tends to have a spillover of material from any given creative period. Some songs don’t quite make it onto an album, and they can spend years lying dormant and unfinished, waiting for a home to reveal itself.

Sexsmith calls these tracks orphans, and one of them, Don’t Lose Sight, landed the opening slot on Hangover Terrace.

“I returned to it a few times over the years and I just couldn’t figure it out,” he says. “It was a structural thing. Once I figured out the structure, [it worked]. I knew right away that this was the first song on the album, because it was just very welcoming from the get-go.”

Another of the orphans is Camelot Towers, a song that constitutes a tragic paradox in that it chronicles a housing crisis and couldn’t find a home itself.

“I grew up in government housing as a kid,” Sexsmith says. “It was great. There was a lot of kids on the street. But we were on the ground level, and they’d be building these high-rise, low-rent apartments [above].

“I guess the whole point of the song – they were given these grandiose names like Buckingham Ridge. I would wonder was that a joke. Was it some sort of cynical thing? Because over time, these buildings would become eyesores.

“The point of the song was not to put that down. These days, there’s not a lot of incentive for people to build houses for low-income people because everyone just wants to make a profit.”

At the time of speaking, Sexsmith has just finished a run of shows in which he performed the work of Warren Zevon. During the pandemic, he listened almost exclusively to the American, and this was a way of paying tribute. It’s a concept he has previously employed for the material of Gordon Lightfoot.

“When I started out, I was just playing covers songs in bars,” Sexsmith says. “I had a couple of my own but they weren’t very good, and I played hundreds of songs by other people. I think it was very important for my education.

“When I came around to writing songs later, I had this wealth of information, this knowledge. I wish more people would do that.”

Touring comes with more complications now than it once did. Sexsmith loathes flying and is already nervous for the trip to Australia later in the year. When he gets to where he’s going, though, the appetite for the stage is just the same. He knows now what to expect from his Irish dates.

“My very, very first Irish show was at the Róisín Dubh in Galway,” he says. “That would’ve been ’96. It wasn’t a great night – it’s a kind of a noisy bar and everyone was talking through my set. I had all these other Irish shows I had to do, and I was a little worried it was going to be the same the rest of the tour.

“My second show was at Whelan’s in Dublin and it was incredible. I almost didn’t have to sing. I only had one album out at the time but everybody seemed to know it.

“I’ve always felt very welcome in Ireland. It’s kind of like you’ve arrived in songwriter heaven. There’s such a tradition and an appreciation of songs. I’ve always enjoyed playing there.”