Phew. Not a double album. The first playlist of this album that I found had 17 tracks listed, but five of these stem from the re-issue bonus tracks, which I largely ignore. Plus the tracks are generally quite short, so after a few albums that felt like lengthy slogs through some fairly generic rock, this makes a nice change.
I could see Newman’s music fitting into a
cabaret setting, it’s got a very show-tune quality. Sometimes this is upbeat
and jaunty, such as the song for which I was named, Simon Smith And His Amazing
Dancing Bear. Well, I was named for the version recorded by The Alan Price Set,
which is more jaunty and ragtime – Newman's own version of the song that he
wrote is a little slower and less boppy (see also the version performed by The
Muppets with Scooter on vocals and Fozzie Bear on “dancing plus interjections”).
Others are much slower – there's a gospel
song He Gives Us All His Love that is in such a slow time signature that it
sounds depressing rather than joyful.
But then the lyrics tell us that "He
hears the babies crying /, He sees the old folks dying"
and then does nothing about it, and the satirical nature is laid bare. No wonder
a song about "God’s love" is so downbeat. We get more of Newman’s satire on the
track Political Science in which he exhorts the USA to “drop the big one”
on the rest of the world because they all hate the US but aren’t any use (“Canada’s
too cold, Europe’s too old”).
Just as some people might think that Newman does actually
think that “short people got no reason to live” (not on this album),
this sadly is the kind of sentiment that the orange stain and its enablers do
really espouse. Burn On, meanwhile, is about the Cuyahoga River in Ohio
catching fire due to pollution, an event that really happened.
Probably the most well-known track on here is You Can
Leave Your Hat On, memorably covered by Tom Jones for the film The Full Monty.
When Jones sings it, he imbues it with a (slightly sleazy) sensuality. Newman’s
original version, with its machine-like beat, makes it feel much more like a
satire on exploitation.
Newman is, I think, one of those songwriters where the
songs are good, but also tend to work better when covered by other people (see
also Bob Dylan). Not that, despite sounding like he has a blocked-up nose,
Newman can’t sing, but more that the arrangements on this album tend towards
not only being very sparse, but also oddly subdued.
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