I’m home after a hectic summer. Regular blogging can resume.

Two nice, long-view, effectively retrospective new music reviews: Douglas Wolk on Brian Eno re-releases from the 70’s; Carl Wilson on Randy Newman’s newest.

(Full disclosure: I know Douglas and Carl – a bit – so I could be praising their review work because of that personal acquaintance. It’s possible I think their reviews are terrible and foolish, but I want them to remain as nodes in my social network.)

As I believe I mentioned, I spent a lot of driving time this summer listening and re-listening to Newman’s back catalogue, all the major studio albums. I got into Bad Love for the first time. “Shame” is a great track. It got me impatient for the new album – Dark Matter – to drop. It’s now out. It’s great. This guy has got this singer-songwriter thing down. He could go far. The satire-with-sentiment, gravel-goes-down-better-with-syrup recipe. Why does the title track have only 3,300 YouTube hits after 3 days? Doesn’t YouTube get what funny is? (Why hasn’t anyone done a thing where they make unofficial videos for Newman’s really outrageous songs out of bits of Pixar and Disney films? Seems logical.)

Randy Newman wrote the greatest song about ELO ever. It’s a better joke about “Mr. Blue Sky” than the Baby Groot dance. (The new ELO album is actually good, too. Great power pop track: “Dirty To The Bone”.)

I am deeply appreciative of how Newman once made Paul Simon croon the lines, “A Year Ago, I met a girl/I thought we’d hit a massive groove/But she dumped me”.

Also, one of the best songs about New Wave music: “Mikey’s”. “Didn’t used to be this ugly music playing all the time/ Where are we, on the moon?”

Now, Brian Eno. (Belle loves Brian Eno every bit as much as I love Randy Newman, but we both appreciate both, I think.) Similar figures in a way. Almost too smart for their own good – eclectic, influential, but mostly through others. Did a lot of stuff in the 70’s. I’ll just sign off with Brian Eno yodeling in 1974. That’s amazing.