Barbra Streisand - Walls

The Guardian 80

(Columbia)

The latest conscript in the culture war against the current White House incumbent is, wonderfully, Barbra Streisand. Rushing over the top with all the fearlessness of her 76 years, she has written a number of remarkable meditations on the gammon corpse quivering in the Oval Office and his debased version of the American dream.

Every inch of Streisand’s majestic charisma is sunk into every syllable of this richly orchestrated comeback set. Occasionally, as with TV’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the glossy aesthetic threatens to neuter the horrors depicted. Yet Streisand’s powerful delivery of simple, pointed lyrics (“Facts are fake and friends are foes / And how the story ends nobody knows”) convinces, even on the gamiest heart-tuggers. Most sensibly, the American president’s name is never uttered, as if not to further poison the well.