Product Review

Nonesuch Records releases The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 3 on September 23. The album is the third in a series comprising solo recordings of songs from throughout Newman's five-decade career. Previous volumes were released in 2003 and 2011. (A four-LP, vinyl-only limited-edition box set, The Randy Newman Songbook, containing all three volumes in a new, thematic sequencing, is being released simultaneously.) Mitchell Froom and Newman's lifelong friend and colleague Lenny Waronker produced The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 3.

The New York Times said of the first volume of The Randy Newman Songbook: "The great craftsmanship is more apparent in the stripped-down context," and the Associated Press said, "Few singer-songwriters could inject more new life into solo piano versions of their work than Randy Newman." The UK's Uncut called Vol. 2 "another subtly sublime stroll through the master's back catalogue," noting that Newman is "owner of a peerless canon," and that the album "isolates his full range of qualities: the improbable juxtapositions of caustic topicality and heart-wrenching universality, the concise character studies, and singing and piano playing that seem to emanate from the very fabric of America."