When did Ron release his first album? I think it sold O.K. Enough for Ron, anyway. A long while ago, it was all 'Elvis Costello's favourite songwriter' and Mojo articles, wasn't it? The Marquee. Not John Mayall or Led Zeppelin, or even Oasis. Islington. I hate it round here.

Singer songwriters have it tough. First of all they have to deal with the fashion sense of their audiences. No, they have to deal with their audiences. I'm twenty five and very young here. There are balding people, lots of glasses - and not many of them of the beer variety. A lot of couples; the couples that saw him last time, and the time before, and the time before that (not to mention before, during and after the break-up).

Ron plays his songs and sweats a lot, crooning from under the same old straggly-bouffant hair-do. Maybe it's Status Quo for the clinically melancholic or Phil Collins in a very harrowing, in-depth two hour counselling session, but I'm not sure whether I care. Ron looks like he stopped growing around the age of eighteen and since then every album cover has shown him in the same mood. slouching hesitantly (stubbornly?) in a variety of doorways or parks. He seems to be the singer songwriter's answer to a more believable Peter Pan. The boy who never grew up but thankfully, cannot fly.

He runs through a couple of tracks from the new record, 'Cobblestone Runway', which seems well received. A Ron Sexsmith gig builds slowly I find; it's like he's trying to comprehend the bald heads and the glasses with songs until someone wins someone else over. Ron seemed to have a hard time with 'Blue Boy', his last but one CD. Not many people bought it. He played the shit out of its best tracks here, starting with 'Cheap Hotel' and littering the rest of the set with it, leaving you wanting to go back to it.

He's also plugging the new one though, and we get all that too. Newies include disco number 'Dragonfly On Bay St', which is almost a pure rip-off of Bobby Womack's 'Across 110th St' and 'These Days', which plods along pleasurably enough. We also get the superb storytelling of 'Strawberry Blonde' and the almost-rocking (melancholically swaying?) of 'Must Have Heard It Wrong'. Ron looks a little better for it, he's now thank you-ing and jump-walking between piano and guitar. After a while, the band leaves the stage for us to witness him at the beginning of what promises to be a tear-jerking flight of acoustic melancholia. Instead we get the new one, 'God Loves Everyone' and another similarly drippy number. Scary.

This is the trouble with New Ron; he tends to believe in things. He must be happy or something. But I s'pose it's either this or the NME credo (Musician Wanted: Dead/Dying or Fucked Up If Possible). Can I opt out, please? Can I just not love Ron?

The band is back and things resume much more satisfactorily. Old mixes with new; 'Galbraith St' is dedicated to a presumably dewy eyed couple who emailed a request. It is however, truly amazing. 'This Song' gets the foot tapping in a realising-one's-own-mortality kind of way. Only Ron does this. No one else. The songs DO actually matter. 'Nothing Good' rocks like hell and Ron looks like a happy kid playing guitar to a Stones record. It's more or less all over, all sweaty bald patches, post-coital sighs and cigarettes. Less hesitance, definitely. A great new one, 'The Least That I Can Do' finishes us off.

Mildly perturbed grunts for "MORE!" are assuaged by an absolutely inspired 'Lebanon, Tennessee' and the long overdue 'Riverbed' and perhaps his best song, 'So Young', with the band forgetting the parts halfway through. But, no matter. It's time for us to be off and in bed. It's just a shame that he'll probably sleep better than us. Getting things off your chest is obviously a tiring profession.

So, no, I don't think I'm quite ready to stop loving Ron, regardless of the break-ups, the arguments and the interminable turns at doing the laundry and the washing up. I must be getting old. But, luckily, not thinning up top either.