Customer Reviews
Prowling his constituency again..... - By: A. Macpherson, 14 Aug 2008 
Randy's back...prowling his constituency with laser wit, astringency & poignancy; delivering three minute vignettes of the present American landscape that make you wince, laugh & cry. A master craftsmanin iron control of his material. With Randy back it certainly "Feels like Home."
Sorry, Randy, we've heard it all before - By: Mr. S. P. Bretherton, 11 Aug 2008 
After the depth & variety of the likes of Land of Dreams & Bad Love, this latest offering is tame fayre indeed. I felt underwhelmed & almost cheated by this lack-lustre, second-rate collection of songs. Poor Randy just can't shake off his post-Toy Story hubris. File 13 for this one!
Reasons To Be Cheerful x 10 - By: The Wolf, 08 Aug 2008 Sound The Trumpet ! Bang The Drum ! Mr Newman's Back In Town !
It's almost a decade since the pointed & poignant pleasures of
'Bad Love' filled The Wolf Cave with its' intimately bitter-sweet strains.
Make no mistake - 'Harps & Angels' is music that matters.
Music which truly does make the world,in a small but tangible way,
a better place.
It carries within it a warts-and-all jaded optimism born out of
a deep engagement with & understanding of his home country
and its' increasingly fragile place within a wider global context.
Whetherin the big picture - 'A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country' -
a sweet & savagely ironic song which the maestro has been playing
live for some time now - orin the small tender snapshot - 'Only A Girl' -
Mr Newman's innate humanism is always present & warmly correct.
Dignityin the face of dissolution.
The big themes - growing older; ambivalence; love & family; prejudice
and injustice are all here, sewn togetherin a tapestry of scintillatingly
brilliant orchestral arrangements. (The band is a real wonder !).
It will make you laugh out loud - 'A Piece Of The Pie' & 'Korean Parents' -
but it will also touch your heart - 'Losing You' & 'Potholes' - &in the
end it may even just fill a small, vacant, yearning spacein your soul.
With the closing number - 'Feels Like Home' - we find ourselves frozen
in the presence of true greatness.
A heartbreaking performance of a profoundly beautiful song.
The Wolf's album of the year. I am confident it will not be bettered.
Essential.
On a cloud passing you soon ...well worth keeping an eye out for. - By: russell clarke, 07 Aug 2008 
This is a review written by someone who tends to dip randomlyin & out of Randy Newman's work so cannot be classedin any shape or form a Newman-phile. In truth I tend to find a lot of his work a tad too fussy & ornate for my taste , yet the universal positive reviews for Harps And Angels drew mein & I'm glad they did for this is,in the main ,a hugely enjoyable album . And being Randy Newman it has a lot to say about America as well & says it with his usual verbose wit & eloquence.
Most of Harps & Angels, like much of Newman's back catalogue is wonderful, if austere, whimsy. His excellent backing band, comprising producer Mitchell Froom on keyboards, Attractions drummer Pete Thomas, virtuoso jazz bassist Greg Cohen, veteran session guitarist Steve Donnelly & pedal steel player Greg Leisz, collaborate with a fulsome orchestra to produce country ballads, Dixieland balladry, oriental pop & even one song- "Laugh And be Happy"- that sounds like a 1930,s show tune, though I ,ve got to confess it's too capricious for my taste.
The title track is a jazzy piano led a tale of a man who believes he's drawing his last breath but us told by a celestial being that "Someone very dear to me has made another clerical error " . "Losing You " is a sumptuous ballad about bereavement that shows that Newman sticking to the simple things is probably the best thing of all. There is also the lovely closing track "Feels Like Home"( which first appeared on 1995's "Faust: Original Soundtrack", sung by Bonnie Raitt, & has since been covered by Emmylou Harris & Chantal Krevaziuk, among others) where his voice is really stretched to it,s limits. I also love "Korean Parents " , which far from being racist recommends that children be brought up by immigrant parents who are far more like likely to make a decent job of it. The oriental arrangement is beautifully observed.
Probably the most amusing track is "A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country" is a pedal steel enhanced errr defence of America , though that defence is basically constructed around the argument that "Now the leaders we have / While they're the worst that we've had/ Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen.". Now saying that Dubya & his neo -cons aren't quite as bad as the Caesars & King Leopold is a flimsy argument as I,m sure is the point but is also none the less funny.
Elsewhere he rails against the erasing of memory by age on the swaggering pomp of "Potholes" & on the overly frilly but comical "Piece Of The Pie" he fulminates against inequalityin the U.S. but because "Bono,s offin Africa -he's never around" the country's saviour is Jackson Browne. "Easy Street" is a nice lugubrious swinging number & contrasts with the finicky arrangement of "Only A Girl" .
Where this sitsin the whole pantheon of Randy Newman releases, well you will have to ask someone else . But of what I have heard this rates pretty damm high. Only "Sail Away: Remastered & Expanded " , "Land of Dreams" & "12 Songs" are on a par with Harps And Angels.On a cloud passing you soon. Watch the skies , keep looking .. The neck ache will be well worth
Another Newman Treat - By: Angel Delta, 06 Aug 2008 As soon as you hear the opening bars of Newman's rolling New Orleans piano you know you'rein for another musical treat. Heavily influenced by Fats Domino, Tin Pan Alley & Dixieland his musical style allows no concessions to fashion but his great trick is to let the music accommodate & absorb his sardonic view of the worldin general & the USAin particular.
Reserving much of his barbed wit for the Bush administration he does at least remind us, "In A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country" that George is not as bad as the Caesars, Hitler, Stalin or King Leopold of Belgium who plundered the Congo of gold, silver & diamonds & left the natives with...... malaria!
Then there is "A Piece Of The Pie" where "If you are livingin the richest countryin the world/wouldn't you think you'd have a better life" & observes that only Jackson Browne gives a sh*t.
In "Korean Parents" he shares his satirical view that American adolescents would have fewer problems & be less dangerous if they were brought up by Korean parents who seemed to have the necessary skills well honed which has a resonance with Asian parentsin our own country.
But there are gentler numbers such as "Feels Like Home", "Only A Girl" & "Losing You" proving that Randy still has a sentimental side.
Produced by lifelong friend, Lenny Waronker, this album, his first studio effortin 9 years, has all of the strengths associated with Randy Newman: lush arrangements, full orchestral sounds, musically & lyrically astute songs, his shuffling, bluesey delivery & that wonderful stride piano.
Visited by Harps & Angels as he almost dies (due to a clerical error!) he says: "So actually the main thing about this story is for me/there really is an afterlife/and I hope to see all of you there/Let's go get a drink."
Amen to that, Randy.
