It’s not often that music can be great and unnecessary at the same time, but that’s the case here. Randy Newman inaugurated his solo-piano Songbook series in 2003; a second volume followed in 2011. This year brings Volume 3, plus a vinyl box set that collects everything on four LPs. Taken together it’s a major slice of Newman’s mighty catalogue—not just the “hits” (technically, he only ever had two of those) but also deep cuts, movie songs and a couple of uncollected ones—all of it lovingly redone and warmly recorded, with Newman alone at the keys throughout.
My quibble as a fan is that Newman is also a savvy arranger, and the instrumental settings on the original albums are often crucial to the songs’ intent—whether it’s the ambitious orchestration on his debut, the Southern ambiance on Good Old Boys, or his ironic appropriation of new wave and California soft-rock later on. And since Newman never tours with a band or orchestra, those arrangements only live on the original albums. Strip down to voice and piano and some of the colors are lost. On a song like “Dixie Flyer,” the original setting (with cinematic synths and Mark Knopfler’s guitar) worked as much as the lyrics to evoke his boyhood in New Orleans. Ditto “It’s Money That I Love,” where the use of a gospel choir gave the satiric knife an extra twist. Or even “Short People,” where he cast the Eagles as the voice of small-mindedness and somehow got them to go along with it.
On the plus side, Newman has lived with many of these songs for decades, so his vocals necessarily have more depth; “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” has a world-weariness that he could only suggest in his twenties, and “Love Story” sounds more poignant from the other end of life. There’s some angrier nuance in “Louisiana 1927”—he’s well aware of what that song’s come to mean after Katrina—and in “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,” even though the original of that was only eight years ago. What the world needs, though, is an all-new Randy Newman album, and the good news is that we’re apparently getting one next year.
