90. Aja - Steely Dan

Our last review in the Steely Dan catalogue finds us in 2003, as we evaluate "Everything Must Go". There are some good moments, for sure! But there's also some questions. While Two Against Nature succeeded modernizing both the jazz sound and the lyrical inspirations of the classic Steely Dan formula, Everything Must Go comes up a bit short in both. It's absolutely not a bad album, but it ends up being a bit disappointing --- especially since it's the last album in the official canon. And while we'd go on to get some more solo albums and band tours, this ends up being the end of the road for the Dan's recording career.

After the surprise live show reunion of the mid-1990s, it felt like only a matter of time before Steely Dan were reconstituted as a studio act. And while it would take until 2000 for that to actually come to fruition, the result ended up being...pretty good, all things considered! It's definitely a DIFFERENT Steely Dan from where we left them in 1980, but the fans who followed the roadmap of Becker & Fagen's solo and collective efforts over the next two decades had a clue of what to expect going in. What we hear on this album is a fun combination of sardonic lyricism, an almost giddy basking in dirty old man-dom, and some genuinely interesting bemusement that they're still speaking to audiences so directly 30 years into their careers. It's probably not your favorite Steely Dan album, but it's actually a really good Steely Dan album if you can get past the overly professional fusion/jazz sheen that is caked all over the instruments.

The pause in the Steely Dan creative partnership had quietly eroded in the late 80s and early 90s, with Becker playing a key role in Fagen's second solo album. Fagen returned the favor on Becker's first solo album, which served as a prelude for the first Steely Dan tour in nearly 20 years.Becker's 11 Tracks of Whack gets the review treatment here, and ends up being one of the most revelatory moments in the Steely Dan experience. Becker's lyrical contributions to the Steely Dan atmosphere suddenly come in to crystal clear focus, as we hear him spinning tales of drug abuse, love, loss, mortality, and undercover aliens. The music is like little else we've heard from the duo --- a clean, uncluttered, almost overly pristine sound at times, but with plenty of beautifully played and produced moments. This one is almost always overlooked by Steely Dan fans, but is well worth checking out. Yes, Becker's voice falls firmly into the "non-traditional" camp, but once you get past that, you're left with a fascinating collection of songs that preceded the duo's official return to the studio at the end of the decade.

As you know by now, Steely Dan's core identity is the songwriting and performative partnership of Fagen & Becker. And with the group's dissolution in the early 1980s, the partners would occasionally step out on their own and create art under their own name. With Becker abandoning the continent and seeking sobriety and a general life reset after Gaucho, it was left to Fagen to make the first solo record of the creative partnership.The Nightfly came out in 1982, and it sounds...VERY MUCH like a Steely Dan album. Even with Becker gone, much of the machinery that made Gaucho was still in action, from the involvement of the engineering and producer staffs to the roster of ace session musicians. Add in Fagen's vocals and the expected intelligence of the lyrics, and many critics viewed The Nightfly as the natural progression of the Steely Dan creative spirit --- to the point that many critics immediately assumed that Fagen had done all the heavy lifting for Steely Dan and that Becker's contributions must have been comparatively minimal.But scratch the surface of The Nightfly and you'll notice something that rarely shined through on prior Steely Dan albums --- emotions of hope, wonder, wistfulness, and playfulness. It might have sounded similar but the sentiment was very different in spots. It's lovely, it's meticulous, and it's one of the best albums of the early 1980s, but it's not the automatic carryover from Gaucho that many assumed at the time.

The 80's have arrived in Steely Dan land, and all is not well. After the stratospheric success of Aja on the artistic and commercial stages, Becker & Fagen returned to New York and started work on their next album. But it ended up being a tortuous recording process, full of the kinda of troubles and difficulties that can produce both great art and great loss. And we got lots of those items with Gaucho. This ends up delivering an album that is both accessible and inaccessible at the same time --- an album with an icy, mechanical demeanor covering up a range of powerful emotions just below the surface.

Most artists or musical groups have a "pinnacle" album --- one where they demonstrate conclusively their talent, their genius, their modus operandi. Aja is that album for Steely Dan --- a brilliant mix of music, lyrics, production, and performance that elevates many of the core elements of their sound to a higher plane. Aja is a fascinating album because of how Steely Dan manages to make a work that many view as their quintessential sound, despite several key departures from what they did in their previous work. The lyrics are more optimistic and less cynical, the performances are both cleaner and less cold, and the overall atmosphere of the sound is welcoming instead of standoffish. The album stands as one of the signature sonic achievements of the 1970s, and contains so many layers that we're still trying to unpeel them after 25+ years of listening.

The mid-70s are in full swing, and the contemporary malaise is starting to seep into pop music more and more. Keen cultural observers Becker and Fagen are right there to document the troubles, and we get to hear a lot of those observations in the lyrics of The Royal Scam. We also hear some decidedly evolutionary changes in the music --- the influences of disco and hard rock start to seep into the cellar of many songs on this album. And yet --- you could make an argument that The Royal Scam is the least satisfying of the early Steely Dan records. There are some tremendous moments, but there are also some moments that don't feel entirely realized. It's still miles better than most albums that came out in 1976, but does it live up to the Steely Dan standard that the group has created in the first four years of their career?

Steely Dan has fully morphed into a studio-only operation at this phase --- the last tour of of the 70s ended in mid-1974, and Becker and Fagen had disbanded the permanent membership (except for themselves), opting instead for an alchemy of the best session players in Los Angeles. They also continued to sharpen their writing skills both lyrically and musically, adding even more acid wit and despicable characters to their songs. The result of all these changes is Katy Lied --- possibly the group's most subversive album, and certainly one of the most striking and unique major artist releases of the decade. Even a major recording malfunction couldn't blunt the impact of this collection of songs.

We're back after an unexplained hiatus, talking in-depth about a pivotal album in Steely Dan history, the 1974 classic "Pretzel Logic". As Becker & Fagen's vision for the band mutates into a largely studio-based operation, their conceptualization of songs and the way the music is recorded starts to change. This album introduces more sophisticated song structures, clearer recording approaches, and an increase in session players and guest musicians. Steely Dan starts to leave behind the "quirky songs by a quirky band" classification and replaces it with something deeper and more intriguing.

Sophomore albums are often a mixed bag, as musical artists grapple with the shock of going pro, the exhaustion of their initial written material, and the need to come up with new ideas while in a constant state of touring to support their first album. Steely Dan were no different, but unlike many groups who have wilted under the pressure, the band arguably puts forward a stronger effort than their debut. Countdown to Ecstasy didn't have a hit single, but what it did have was an incredibly solid and consistent group of songs that had numerous moments of brilliance. Attitude and atmosphere abound here, from the post-60s hippie kiss-off of Bodhisattva to the post-nuclear holocaust fantasy of King Of The World. The playing is sublime in places, as Baxter, Dias, and Fagan showcase their technical and melodic skill in equal measure. This album sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of Steely Dan albums, but you're doing yourself a huge disservice if you don't fully immerse yourself in it.