Newman works with piano, an orchestra and a Dixieland-style combo, using American musical tradition to amplify irony and yank heartstrings. The best moments echo classics like "Sail Away" and "Louisiana 1927," songs that mixed pathos and bruised patriotism with brutal wit. The set's keystone is "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," released on iTunes last year. A state-of-the-union ballad that cops musical DNA from "America the Beautiful," its lyrics raised eyebrows last year when they ran as an op-ed piece in The New York Times — albeit minus the final verse about "tight-ass" Italian Supreme Court justices. Its press-secretary punch lines about how the Bush administration ain't so bad compared with Stalin are Colbert Report-hilarious. But its eulogy for American empire and a people "adrift in the land of the brave and the home of the free" is profoundly sad.
Elsewhere, the jaunty "Laugh and Be Happy" winks at two-faced immigration policy, while "Korean Parents" is a gleefully stereotyping indictment of U.S. child-rearing set to chop-suey orchestration. The funniest number, "A Piece of the Pie," affectionately skewers pop polemicists John Mellencamp and Jackson Browne. But Newman's "Feels Like Home," once covered by Chantal Kreviazuk on the Dawson's Creek soundtrack, is an irony-free love song — perhaps for a dear nation that, after all, we'd be willing to go into therapy with.
(Posted: Aug 7, 2008)
Click the play button.
Register or enter your username and password.
Let the music play!
It's FREE.
- Harps and Angels
- Losing You
- Laugh And Be Happy
- A Few Words In Defense of Our Country
- A Piece of the Pie
- Easy Street
- Korean Parents
- Only A Girl
- Potholes
- Feels Like Home
Your Turn
Advertisement
More CD Reviews
-
Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst -
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
CSNY/Deja Vu Live -
Randy Newman
Harps and Angels -
Lloyd
Lessons In Love -
One Day As A Lion
One Day As A Lion EP -
Sarah McLachlan
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (Legacy Edition) -
Mike Gordon
The Green Sparrow -
Little Richard
The Very Best Of Little Richard -
Buddy Guy
Skin Deep -
Rose Hill Drive
Moon Is The New Earth