Harps and Angels, released August 5, 2008, on Nonesuch Records, was Randy Newman’s first album of new material in nine years.. The recipient of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Original Song, 17 Oscar nominations, five Grammy awards, and 13 Grammy nominations, Newman is a singular figure who over the course of his career has explored various styles and sounds of the canon of 20th-century American music.

Having focused on film scores, live performances, and career retrospectives since 1999’s Bad Love, Newman returns with this album that already has a successful single. Harps and Angels’ “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,” originally released exclusively via iTunes in 2007 and published as a New York Times op-ed piece, was named the #2 song of 2007 by Rolling Stone (“right behind Jay-Z and ahead of Rihanna,” Newman helpfully points out).

Co-produced by Mitchell Froom (Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Sheryl Crow) and former Warner Bros. head and longtime Newman collaborator Lenny Waronker, Harps and Angels showcases Newman’s myriad talents as a political and social commentator, balladeer, and storyteller. The arrangements have a Dixieland feel, with Newman on piano fronting a club-size combo; several tracks feature his lush orchestrations, as grand as anything he has produced on his film scores. According to NPR, “Singer and composer Randy Newman’s wry and sometimes raw musical commentary has become a big part of the American cultural landscape.” The Los Angeles Times says “Newman is a brilliant songwriter who, like Paul Simon and a few others, bridges the gap between the classic American Songbook craftsman tradition and the more personalized singer-songwriter style of the modern pop age.”

Harps and Angels is Newman’s first album of new material on Nonesuch Records and second Nonesuch release following 2003’s Randy Newman Songbook, Volume 1, which celebrated some of Newman’s best-known work in solo performances by the songwriter at the piano. “It’s an austere and moving piece of work,” says Interview magazine, “the songs, some going back 35 years, sound absolutely fresh.”