|
| Harps & Angels | 
 enlarge
| Artist: Randy Newman
Label: Nonesuch
Category: Music
List Price: $18.98
Buy New: $8.85
You Save: $10.13 (53%)
New (50) Used (14) from $8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 13
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.3
MPN: 122812
UPC: 075597998931
EAN: 0075597998931
ASIN: B001AN5BNM
Release Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Tracks:
| • | Harps and Angels | | • | Losing You | | • | Laugh and Be Happy | | • | A Few Words | | • | A Piece of the Pie | | • | Easy Street (3:14) | | • | Korean Parents | | • | Only a Girl | | • | Potholes | | • | Feels Like Home |
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Randy Newman's first studio album of all new material in nearly a decade is, by turns, hilarious, poignant and scathingly satirical. Harps and Angels often has an easy going Crescent City feel, with Newman on piano fronting a small combo and revealing, as Rolling Stone put it after the Carnegie Hall show, his serious love and study of the New Orleans piano tradition.
Album Description
Randy Newman's 2008 studio album titled Harps and Angels. Produced by Mitchell Froom and Lenny Waronker, it contains seven new songs and three updated versions of previously released songs.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Compelling. A Grammy is in the cards ! August 5, 2008
46 out of 52 found this review helpful
Randy Newman has made a career out of being a very successful film composer (with 15 Oscar nominations and one win), who is best known these days for his "Pixar" soundtracks, including "Toy Story", "A Bug's Life" and "Monsters Inc".
But it is on his own albums, when he is not writing to order, that he really gets to let fly with as much comedic misanthropy as he can muster.
His last album, "Bad Love" was a brilliant black diamond of a record and his best for 30 years.
"Harps & Angels" finds him in a more mellow mood. But mellow is a relative term.
America, like all empires, has come to an end. This is the driving theme of "Harps & Angels", but Newman is a man of multitudes. He spits at US governance one minute ("A Few Words in Defence Of Our Country") and chokes up the next ("Feels Like Home').
The personal and political entwine lyrically with supreme cleverness, while New Orleans jazz, C&W, the Hollywood soundtrack are spitefully parodied. Classic Randy.
"Harps And Angels" is the first track and is about a man having a heart attack. The sound of harps and angels comes from God's backing singers as the judgment is delivered: "You ain't been a good man, you ain't been a bad man..."
Most of "Harps & Angels", like much of Newman's canon, is similar glorious, if bleak, whimsy.
His formidable backing band, comprising producer, time-served collaborator Mitchell Froom on keyboards, Attractions drummer Pete Thomas, virtuoso jazz bassist Greg Cohen, veteran session guitarist Steve Donnelly and pedal steel player Greg Leisz, conspire with a full-dress orchestra to confect country ballads, show tunes, Dixieland balladry, oriental pop and, on "Laugh And Be Happy", a groundbreaking enterprise in sarcastic Charleston. This has circulated in demo form before, and two other songs may also be familiar.
The closing cut, the gorgeous devotional "Feels Like Home" first appeared on 1995's "Faust", sung by Bonnie Raitt, and has since been covered by Emmylou Harris and Chantal Krevaziuk, among others. "A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country" was as an iTunes download - and New York Times op-ed - last year.
The lyrics of the latter made the op-ed page of the newspaper, but they work much better sung in Newman's lazy Noo Awlins croak - "the end of an empire is messy at best, this empire is ending like all the rest".
In "A Piece of The Pie", he hammers home his the-rich-get-richer theme with jagged, Kurt Weill-ish orchestration, while "Potholes" recommends creeping amnesia as a defence against painful memories. "Korean Parents", with its pseudo-Oriental flourishes, may be a misanthropic joke too far as Newman lampoons Asian families who bully their children to academic success, but he offers melodious balm with "Losing You" and the hymn-like closer, the aforementioned "Feels Like Home".
Fans of unfettered Newman have been waiting nine years for some new, non-cartoon material of this sort and will likely not be disappointed by this pithy ten-song collection, which indulges both his merciless wit and his softer, more sentimental side.
This album will only take up 36 minutes of your time. It'll make you laugh and cry.
After all, it's Randy Newman.
The fortuneteller says that a Grammy is...in the cards!
Toy Story (10th Anniversary Edition)
A Bug's Life (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Bad Love
Monsters, Inc. (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman
Faust (Dlx)
A gem of an album : dark, cynical and very funny. August 5, 2008
46 out of 51 found this review helpful
Randy Newman is best known for writing songs for cute kids films like "Toy Story".
But don't knock it - the cash funds gems of albums like this. This is the real Newman - dark, cynical and very funny. "Harps & Angels" is only his third new album of non-movie music in 20 years as he's been busy scooping accolades for his Hollywood soundtrack work - but it's been worth the wait.
It's a winning mix of loping, Fats Domino-ish, New Orleans blues, topped off by Newman's sardonic slur.
The jazzy, bluesy instrumentation here is imbued with a blockbuster kind of magic. Newman is the man behind scores to "Toy Story" and "Monsters, Inc" after all.
Happily, he cuts through any cloying cutesiness with timely observational swipes - taking in such themes as 'terror', modern parenting and the economy, all delivered in his unmistakeably good-natured drawl.
The album consists of just 10 tracks, and has a running time that falls just short of 35 minutes, yet freights multitudes, musically and lyrically.
The title track is a gradually building, slowly sumptuous, New Orleans-flavoured jazz shimmy. Over this, Newman unspools the tale of a man sucking what he believes are his dying breaths on a pavement, only to be visited by an inexplicably Francophone celestial being who admits to the narrator that his time isn't up just yet - and, by way of atoning for the clerical error, offers some advice towards a better, more observant life.
"A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country" is the album's pivotal address: on this one, he's like a cross between Dr John and philosopher John Grey. A mid tempo bluesy country shuffle is the platform for a look at humanity's inhumanity and the decline of the American empire.
Randy's genius is to turn intelligent thought into simple words and complex, compelling, bitter-sweet American music.
Clearly, the early 21st century has provided rich fuel for Newman's self-styled American songbook.
Yet he's also capable of crafting a classy yet unreconstructed love song, as proved by the climactic melody "Feels Like Home".
It's sweetly sentimental enough to give you the warm'n'fuzzies - but this ol' teddy bear still has plenty of chutzpah and satirical bite.
"A Piece Of The Pie" makes you chuckle with swearing and jokes: he argues with a chorus of bellicose patriots and bickering Belgians, and pleads for deliverance by Jackson Browne. But the brilliantly sharp Weill-esque arrangement delivers a real sense of unease underneath all the knockabout. The world really is going to hell.
Newman is coming up to 65 now but he is not about to retire his lapel-grabbing melodies. Just when he begins to sound like a protest singer (even of the most elusive kind) he throws in a show tune such as "Laugh and Be Happy" or a conventional piece of Dixie jazz, in "Only a Girl.
The tracks that glide most assuredly into Newman's pantheon of classics are "Losing You", two minutes and 16 seconds of wonder, a deceptively simple, rueful, achingly beautiful ballad of bereavement that could equally have been written for Tom Waits or Frank Sinatra, and "Feels Like Home, beautifully crafted, precise and moving.
Both will have you in tears and both are among Newman's best songs.
"Feels like home" has been coverd by Bonnie Raitt on Michael: Music from the Motion Picture, by Linda Ronstadt on Feels Like Home, by Chantal Kreviazuk on What If It All Means Something, by Mario Frangoulis on Give US Your Poor, by Emmylou Harris on Trio II (Two) and by Soul diva Nita Whitaker on Life Stories.
By Newman's standards this is a good rather than great album.
But Newman's standards are very high. After all he's written some of the greatest popular songs of the past forty years.
There is much on "Harps & Angels" that will delight admirers of Newman's trademark sucker-punches, double-bluffs and irony-laden conceits.
Not for the first time, Newman is at his most affecting when he plays it mercilessly straight: his flickers of sincerity all the more beguiling for only appearing rarely.
My highlights : "A Few Words in Defence of Our Country", "A Piece of the Pie", "Losing You" and "Feels Like Home".
Have a great listening experience.
 Great..A real fun listen August 7, 2008
20 out of 27 found this review helpful
Randy and his usual brilliant, hilarious lyrics. He vocally plays it very loose on this album, seemingly ad-libbing lines - all to great effect. In today's market, if this were an unknown artist (and a minority) this could be album of the year.
The hits: Harp and Angels, Losing You, A Few Words, Easy Street, Only A Girl, Potholes.
The misses: Laugh & Be Happy, A Piece Of The Pie, Korean Parents, Feels Like Home.
Nothing here comes up to the level of "Good Old Boys' (1973) - but it's still worth the purchase. All feel-good songs, except the heartbreakingly beautiful "Losing You."
Feels Like Randy Newman Is Back Where He Belongs August 5, 2008
18 out of 57 found this review helpful
"Connoisseurs covet Randy Newman's Seventies work, when he emerged as one of the most cutting and empathic of American singer-songwriters. So his return to political-minded material is reason to wrap yourself in the flag and cheer." Will Hermes
Randy Newman in the first line of the first song of his latest CD 'Harps & Angels" asks "Hasn't anybody seen me lately?" Yes, Randy we have, and we love ya, but we have been waiting for this studio CD for nine years. Hallelujah, I Just Love Him So! Most of the critical reviews of this new CD are positively positive. A mixed bag, so to speak of Randy's best. He goes back to his New Orleans, Dixieland roots in this CD, a most personal journey. Some have called this CD a little black, but I call it a rainbow. It has something for everyone. Political, bruised Patriotic wit, mixed in with a peculiar immigration policy. He is vexed and grateful that he can still provoke us. One critic called this CD whimsy and that term suits this CD to a "T". It is glorious and bleak, happy and showy, thoughtful, full of irony and humorous. And, above, all Randy Newman intones an achingly beautiful ballad, 'Feels Like Home'. Try to listen to Randy croon this tune without tears coming to your eyes. Is this a love song to a person or to his country? Funny, rueful and simple, Randy Newman sings this tune straight.
"If you knew how lonely my life has been
And how long I've been so alone
And if you knew how I wanted someone to come along
And change my life the way you've done
It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me
It feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me
It feels like I'm all the way back where I belong."
Randy Newman is at his best when he is playing his music in a concert before a room of adoring fans. And, that is exactly the feel of this CD. Whether we came to Randy Newman because of his film scores or because of a love for his satires, political or not, you will not be disappointed. Randy sings to us in these ten songs of a loss of our American country as we knew it. The present administration may not be as bad as Cesar or Stalin, but its the worst we have seen. We have hope, we are not dead nor dying, in fact we have much to do. Randy throws us a Dixieland curve and sings of loss of a love, finding of a new love, the waste of memory on old age, the loss of deliverance of Patriotism by Jackson Browne and I like Jackosn Browne, the story of immigrants and how those of us living in the richest country in the world should expect more. And, then, finally Home, "Feels Like Home', one of the loveliest of songs. It has become my favorite and will certainly become a cover for every romantic singer.
Randy Newman moves from Tom Lehrer to Tom Waits. He may sound full of despair at times, but his soul searching moves on to love, joy and hope.
Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 08-05-08
Randy Newman Anthology
Randy Newman Anthology, Vol. 2 (Music for Film, Television and Theater)
Sail Away
Not Quite August 11, 2008
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
Randy Newman gets a three-star head-start for being Randy Newman, but this is an oddly anemic effort. It's billed as an album of all new material, but it's not: "Laugh & Be Happy" was written for the Pixar animators easily 15 years ago in response to the Evil Mouse meddling; "Feels Like Home" is from Faust, also going back close to 15 years now. Several other songs feel like cast-offs from earlier albums/projects. Among those that don't, several of those feel like Randy Newman consciously writing Randy Newman songs, instead of simply writing songs.
Don't get me wrong, that three-star head-start comes with a lot of gifts: intricate internal harmonies, lush string arrangements, and a barbed, rambunctious and often simply hilarious sense of irony, in bold display here to an extent often nodded at but not usually found in such raw abundance on his records (as opposed to live performances).
And there are pleasures to be found here, to be sure, not least of which the twisted "Korean Parents," and the one-sided conversations that serve as bridges in several of the tunes. But if you're licking your chops waiting to get your synapses fired off by 9 years of deliciously marinating Newman tunes, I'm afraid you'll have to settle for a few light appetizers and an entertaining waiter.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
