Randy Newman's Harps and Angels tour began earlier this week at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill, New York, and continues downstate with two performances in New York City: a free in-store set at the Apple Store in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood this evening at 7 PM ET and a concert in Carnegie Hall's main hall, Stern Auditorium, tomorrow night at 8 PM.

USA Today music critic Edna Gunderson has added the Harps and Angels track "A Piece of the Pie" to her latest playlist, offering this description: "A bouncy melody, intricate arrangement, deliciously stinging lyrics, provocative message. Sublime even by Newman standards."

The Richmond Times Dispatch out of Richmond, Virginia, gives the new album four stars, with special correspondent Hays Davis crediting Randy, along with fellow singer-songwriters like Loudon Wainwright III and John Prine, with helping to make that moniker "seem like a somewhat honorable profession, or at least safe for a few welcome smart alecks." Bolstering that humorous faint praise, Davis declares: "He’s still in a class of his own, and Harps and Angels is the kind of album that longtime fans really get to celebrate every few years."
   
The reviewer continues:

Forty years after his debut, a great new Randy Newman album may seem like too much to hope for (though none of his records have been a real letdown), but that’s just what he presents here. He’s in great voice, and his songwriting strikes the right Newman mix of sweet/sour/scathing that makes Harps a record that could have landed just behind 1974’s classic Good Old Boys and seemed like a natural progression.

To read the full review, visit inrich.com. For more tour informaiton, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.