A schizophrenic record... Such a clash between lyrics and melody and arrangement... You rarely find satire this biting with tunes this sweet (and a voice this dorky). The songs cover everything, from innocence ("Dayton Ohio, 1903") to perversity ("You Can Leave Your Hat On"); from piety ("He Gives Us All His Love") to blasphemy ("God's Song"); from fathers ("Old Man," supremely more affecting than Neil Young's song of the same name) to sons ("Memo to My Son")... and I'm pretty sure all of those songs can be read in more than one way (is "Memo" the cutest or most sinister song ever written?). I'd call the thematic range "American," though I'm conscious that Newman reserves his best bile for such distinctions ("Sail Away" is a stately, epic, beautiful song about our country's greatest sin; "Political Science" gets less and less hyperbolic every year). The scope is contradicted, naturally, by the (awesome) brevity of the tunes, few of which exceed three minutes.
People who hate this album, if such people exist, are probably humorless, and people who love this album probably rule... I can see them doing crossword puzzles and reading Mark Twain. Become friends with those people.
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