Did you know Newman got his first ever platinum album last year? Forty years into his recording career and it was for Cars, which, let's face it, is the worst of Pixar's movies. A Faustian deal indeed.
Meanwhile, his albums of forlorn characters, biting satire and love songs have come less and less often. We've given Randy Newman quite a case of negative reinforcement.
But tonight, as Newman says, walking on stage to great applause, "These are new songs, 'cuz this is a new album." Harps and Angels, just his third studio album in twenty years, is about as fine a return to form as any (old) Newman fan could hope for. Dressed in a blue short sleeve shirt and jeans, seated at a Steinway, Newman and his band run through all ten songs from Harps and Angels in order, for a future NPR broadcast.
Then of course there's the angry songs. This is after all, Newman's only album of the Bush administration, and it's "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" which gets all of us laughing and clapping. The song originally appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed page last January, where it caused a small stir, but they excised a verse about the Supreme Court, for reasons you might understand:
You know it pisses me off a little
That this Supreme Court is gonna outlive me
A couple of young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now too
But I defy you, anywhere in the world
To find me two Italians as tight-ass as the two Italians we got
And as for the brother...
Well, Pluto’s not a planet anymore either.