Randy Newman has a few biting new words

Randy Newman’s body of work is so deep and so rich that his performances never shortchange listeners, even when they consist solely of songs several years or decades old.

The pleasant surprise, then, at the singer-songwriter’s show Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall was the introduction of three new songs, even though he hasn’t put out a new studio album since “Bad Love” in 1999.

The bulk of his 2 1/2 -hour solo show still consisted of signature acerbic pieces such as “Sail Away,” “Political Science,” “My Life Is Good” and “I Love L.A.,” as well as kid-friendlier movie hits “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and “I Love to See You Smile.”

But he brought his catalog into the 21st century with a new song so funny it hurt, one that stands as a three-decades-on bookend to “Political Science.” In that earlier number, America’s hubris was presented as an endearing albeit potentially disastrous national personality quirk; “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” is every bit as stabbingly humorous, but in the end bids farewell to this nation’s long run as the No. 1 superpower.

Other history-minded songs he chose Sunday lent the show a strong political bent. Yet Newman consistently brings the global back to the personal -- knowing, like that other quintessentially American humorist, Mark Twain, that the world’s problems can always be traced back to one thing: the damned human race.

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randy.lewis@latimes.com