CD Review: I Know Things Now – Jeff Harnar

I KNOW THINGS NOW – JEFF HARNAR (PS Classics).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

This Jeff Harnar CD of the deeply personal Sondheim show he performed pre-pandemic at London’s Crazy Coqs and in February at The Pheasantry is the real, beautifully packaged deal.

On the cover and in the booklet inside the scene is set with a load of atmospheric shots of Manhattan with Harnar front and centre, great sleeve notes that inform and entertain, a detailed song list (which we don’t get at live cabarets, more’s the pity) and 28 glorious songs (or bits of them) shoehorned into little more than hour on a perfectly mastered disc. Who could ask for anything more?

Subtitled ‘My Life in Sondheim’s Words’, this virtually sung-through masterpiece is a raw look-back at the life and times of a gay man in New York, just as Sondheim himself was, and relating all those magical words to his own, often troubled, place in society.

If you want anecdotes or back-stories you will be disappointed. That was never Harnar’s intention. I Know Things Now comes out as a self-portrait, using the words from nine Sondheim musicals and a movie, Dick Tracy, that he scored.

Harnar is never afraid to take on songs Sondheim wrote for the opposite sex such as the soul-baring ‘Losing My Mind’, the bitter ‘Could I Leave You?’ and the naughty ‘Can That Boy Foxtrot!’ He lets the words speak for themselves, without explanation or context. It’s that way because his director, Sondra Lee, made him believe that Sondheim’s words alone were “all I needed to create my musical self-portrait”.

I’ve seen the dapper Harnar on both sides of the Atlantic with three seasons of the Great American Songbook in London at Jermyn Street fondly remembered from two decades ago. He compered and sang then in a smooth, all-American way, a good pro but without the presence of the must-see (and must-listen-to) artist he has become with greater life experience.

With the untouchable Jon Weber again on piano for the CD and conducting an orchestra (something we obviously had to do without at the two intimate London cabaret rooms), Harnar has a musical director and arranger on his own wavelength and a star in his own right. What magic they create together!

From the frenetic, tongue-twisting ‘Getting Married Today’ to less-familiar pearls like ‘The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened’, the love song from Road Show, Sondheim’s swansong (as it turned out), and the title number from ‘Anyone Can Whistle’, this is a set to delight but also challenge pre-conceived notions.

Hard to believe Harnar steered clear of Sondheim in his younger days, revealing in the CD’s booklet: “I was too intimidated by his material and Broadway voices that have brought it to life to touch Mr Sondheim’s music until I was in my sixties.”

New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden writes in a terrific essay for the CD: “Once a cabaret singer with scarcely a care in the world, Harnar is now an adult who has been through the wringer. He gives the songs a bite that leaves tooth marks.”

Every word, even in the relentless rush of ‘Getting Married Today’, comes over as clear as a bell from a master of his craft while, by coupling two unlikely bedfellows in ‘Children Will Listen’ and ‘The Ballad of Sweeney Todd’, Harnar reminds us of the damage we inflict on ourselves and those we love.

An important, thought-provoking piece of work which will intrigue Sondheim lovers and probably puzzle those who are not.

Jeremy Chapman