Today, the world.

Tomorrow, Canada.

The strategy may seem a little backwards, but for Toronto singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, winning fans on the other side of the world has been much easier than building a following in his home country.

When the Sun contacted Sexsmith at the one-bedroom Toronto home he shares with his spouse and two kids, this genial, down-to-earth performer had just returned from a month-and-a-half tour that took him to Japan, Australia and throughout Europe.

"I just felt really good about the tour because it's important for me to do the rounds," he says over the telephone.

"A lot of these places I've been to before and I see the attendances doubling and tripling. Songwriting is still alive and well; it's just not what the general population here is grooving to ... In fact, I'd say the only place where songwriting isn't really appreciated is in (North) America."

Sexsmith, 35, is one of the finest young songwriters in pop today, but don't take my word for it. Elvis Costello sings his praises. Paul McCartney invited him over for breakfast. And Rod Stewart offered his endorsement by covering Sexsmith's Secret Heart on his last studio album.

"It was cool hearing that famous voice doing it," Sexsmith says, "but if (Baywatch star) David Hasselhoff wanted to record one of my songs, I would probably be excited, too."

Released this spring, Sexsmith's third major-label release Whereabouts is another collection of sterling originals.

This time, though, the new songs are gussied up in more elaborate arrangements (featuring woodwinds, strings, brass and bells) than those on its sparse predecessors, 1995's self-titled debut and 1997's Other Songs.

"Each album we've tried to move in baby steps," says Sexsmith, who plays the U of C's Rozsa Centre on Tuesday.

"I always loved those (Harry) Nilsson records and Randy Newman records with all that (orchestral) stuff.

"The beginning of Beautiful View is this big, bombastic thing. That's something I wanted to do because I just thought it would be fun. Nobody seems to write intros anymore for their songs. It was something I just wanted to try."

Whereabouts is a much more personal album than its more observational predecessors. Many of the songs express a desire to make a relationship work during troubled times.

One suspects they might have been inspired by Sexsmith's dramatic lifestyle change -- he was a courier who turned into an international recording star -- and the challenges it posed for his partner and their kids, Christopher, 14, and Evelyne, 9.

"Yeah, I think a lot of songs came from the strain of all that," Sexsmith says. "I was going through a bit of a hard time last year when I was writing a lot of these songs, like Riverbed and Must Have Heard It Wrong -- the more bitter songs. But I think ultimately it's a happy album. By the end of it, with Every Passing Day and Seems To Recall, it gets hopeful."

Indeed, Sexsmith's love songs aren't fairy tales that end happily ever after. Instead, they're reminders of the work, the compromises and the commitment that love requires.

"I get really kind of irritable with a lot of the songs you hear on the radio that say, 'I'll never break your heart,' and all these sort of promises that I don't think anyone could keep. It sounds like a bunch of lies to me sometimes," he says.

"I love to write love songs ... I just don't want them to be bubblegum. I try to make sure they're as real as possible."

Sexsmith is currently writing songs for his fourth major-label album, and preparing to reissue his hard-to-find independent recording, Grand Opera Lane, which he hopes to make available through the Internet early next year.