If a relationship counsellor or therapist were ever to have me pen a letter to my girlfriend in which I list all my grievances against her, chief among them would be her refusal to bow down before Randy Newman's majesty. Upon viewing footage of him performing his best song 'A Wedding in Cherokee County' on mid '90s German TV, all she saw fit to comment on was his unusual taste in shirt wear. A less fashion conscious friend, meanwhile, once dismissed his entire body of work as “ridiculous”, an infamous Family Guy parody serving as perhaps his only frame of reference. In contrast to the barbarians with whom I associate, the audience of Van Dyke Parks lookalikes gathered in the Concert Hall tonight know where it's at. A bare-bones, solo exploration of his back catalogue leaves the veteran with nowhere to hide and ultimately affirms as an artist very much at the top of his field.
Newman may not be the best vocalist and his skills as a pianist are limited, but no-one writes songs quite like his, or would have the audacity to perform some of his more contentious material. Sail Away, one of the highlights of the set is a case in point. Written from the perspective of a slave trader attempting to entice an African native onto his boat, the track was covered by both Linda Ronstadt and Bobby Darin around the time of its release. The former belted out its lyrics in a distasteful spirit of triumphant patriotism, while Darin's rendition saw him replace the track's telling racial epithet with the more wholesome “child”, probably so as not to upset his Motown-weaned audience. Naturally, both approaches completely neutered the recordings.
If contemporary singers were reluctant to address 'Sail Away''s true concerns, there's no way they'd have touched 1974's 'Rednecks' which frequently deploys the n-word in order to highlight hypocrisy in the American North's attitude towards race. Though Newman is careful to explain the story behind the latter tonight, he's been nurturing these songs for so long now that there's really no need for him to do so. His performance is so nuanced that he is seen to effortlessly inhabit the mindsets of his frequently abhorrent characters, bringing their intentions to the fore with a minimum of fuss. Only on an especially vicious rendition of 'Short People' does he over-sell his lyrics, to great comic effect.
Newman reels out too many classics to mention, but further highlights include a chilling 'In Germany Before the War', the realistic Marxism of 'The World Isn't Fair' and a poignant 'Louisiana 1927' the track having acquired new resonance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Though he's right to dismiss his musical technique as “just like Beethoven but shitty,” he's undoubtedly up there with the likes of Lehrer, Wainwright and Merritt as far as songwriting wit goes.
