Randy Newman Dark Matter

3.5 stars out of 5 -- "Small-scale dramas hit home harder, like 'On the Beach,' a wistful Western-swing tune about a depressing aged surfer burnout, and the devastatingly beautiful solo-piano lament 'Wandering Boy'..."
"Newman is his own director, and he's as maximal as he wants to be in conveying the humor and the stakes. The result is perhaps the most narratively complex album of his fifty-year career as a solo artist."
"[W]e get several reliably tender ballads from a true virtuoso sentimentalist, especially the deeply touching 'Lost Without You'..."
4 stars out of 5 -- "[B]rimming with his sweet-sour magic....There's a familiar sense that such small tales might somehow hold the key to much bigger subjects..."
Paste (magazine) - "[S]ome of the most fun and intoxicating material of his career....The theatrical arc of the long-winded concept piece 'The Great Debate' opens the album..."
Pitchfork (Website) - "He has lost little of his bite and none of his humor....He seems less interested in polemics than before, less interested in leveraging sentiment with disgust, giving over -- ever so slightly -- to a softer intention."