Mr Newman sings the way he sings because his tongue is permanently stuck in his cheek, and he sings what he sings because his spleen is worn on his sleeve. Harps and Angels starts with an epiphany, our hero face down in the street, tears roiling to the gutter as the angels tell him to get right with the Lord, and ends with him snuggled up ignoring sirens and smashing windows seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

In between there are struggling immigrants and arguing Belgians, tight-assed Italians and 110 year-old crippled vegetarian midgets, all told by the born-again optimist Randy to lighten up in patently insincere fashion – comfort corpse cold. His America is abandoned by hope and by John Mellencamp, and no-one gives a shit but Jackson Browne. It’s a sad disunited state of affairs, and Randy Newman is a better chronicler than it deserves. Harps and Angels is the soundtrack to the disaster movie that is America now. And it’s funny too.