Confusion and devotion …

… On Good Old Boys, Randy Newman approaches the South with an insider’s touch — Permanent Records — The A.V. Club. (Hat tip, DaveLull.)

… Newman has always been identified as a Californian. Furthermore, his typecasting as a nebbishy intellectual in the world of pop music would seem to make him a particularly poor choice for approaching salt of the earth, working class Americans. But, as Good Old Boys demonstrates ably, beneath Newman the biting satirist lies Newman the populist, always ready to express viewpoints other than his own in his songs. Newman’s ability to adopt the perspective of an everyman Southerner makes Good Old Boys one of the few profound documents of the American South written by someone not from the region.