Randy Newman recently stopped by the Today show studios to talk with hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb about his latest album, Harps and Angels. The segment, which aired this morning, is now available online at today.msnbc.com.

Randy is currently on tour on the West Coast. He was in his home state of California this weekend, with stops in San Francisco, Monterey, and Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Independent's Lisa Engelbrektson says that "only the most removed of Americans has probably (to their own misfortune) managed to ignore Randy Newman’s warm, fun, and downright hilarious piano numbers."

The concert review continues:

In fact, even missing game seven of the Boston vs. Tampa Bay series last Sunday night in order to witness Newman in action was well worth it. Truly a great American storyteller, his satirical and often hysterical approaches to world problems made for a comedic and lighthearted evening at the Lobero. And the music wasn’t bad either. With nothing but his voice and a grand piano, Newman managed to captivate the sold out crowd to the point of utter silence, and still receive impressive bouts of applause, a couple standing ovations, and even some audience sing-alongs ...

Read the full review at independent.com.

Engelbrektson's colleague at The Independent, Natalie D-Napoleon, in her review of the new album, Harps and Angels, sees "standout moments" in the "touching" tracks "Losing You" and "Feels Like Home," and concludes: "True Newman fans will be delighted with his undiminished wit and incisive political and social commentary, all wrapped up in playful and complex arrangements. After all, who else can reference Julius Caesar, the Spanish Inquisition, and malaria in the same song?"

The album review can also be found at independent.com.

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Randy next performs tomorrow night at the Moore Theatre in Seattle. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Gene Stout talks to the singer-songwriter "known for a deft mix of humor, pathos and satire in his songwriting" about writing the new album and, given the political posture of a few of its tracks, his thoughts on the upcoming election. Read the interveiw at seattlepi.nwsource.com.

The Seattle Times music critic Patrick MacDonald also talks politics and music with Randy and says the new album is "full of brilliantly funny and moving songs. In his conversation with Randy, MacDonald tells him: "This album sounds like you had so much fun with the orchestra, the studio, the jokey, biting political songs. It's a return to your early period." Read that interview at seattletimes.nwsource.com.

The Seattle Weekly's Andrew Miller suggests one reason for the long lag time since Randy's previous studio release might be that the songs on them remain potent even well after their initial release: "his trenchant political pieces remain relevant for years after they're released."

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No Depression's Don McLeese, in his review of the previous weekend's concert in Des Moines, Iowa, asserts that Randy's new album "stands with his best work." McLeese says Randy's "as distinctive a songwriter as popular music has produced, with music that somehow mixes Fats Domino, Kurt Weill and Stephen Foster with a lyrical perspective that draws from Mark Twain and Flannery O' Connor ... And he's really, really (really) funny ..."

The reviewer goes on to describe the latest work this way:

The new Harps and Angels not only recalls the best music Newman has ever made, it equals it. Though the pianist almost always performs solo, the string and vocal arrangements on the new album rank with his most ambitious ever (and thus with the most ambitious in popular music), and the material balances political broadsides such as "A Few Words ..." and "A Piece of the Pie" with the emotional fragility of "Losing You" and "Feels Like Home," songs as tender as any Newman has written.

To read the article, visit nodepression.com.

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Randy released his list of "desert island discs" on the BBC Radio 4 show of the same name this past weekend. The list includes recordings of works by Beethoven, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Mahler, his uncle Alfred Newman's score to the classic film How Green Was My Valley, and Ray Charles's performance of Mercer/Arlen's "Come Rain or Come Shine." His book of choice: Dante's Divine Comedy. For the complete list, visit bbc.co.uk.