By Jon Bream
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Steely Dan is pop music’s most successful recluse.
In their heyday from 1972 to 1980, the Dan duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker eschewed the stage, touring briefly two or three times. They reunited in 1993 to hit the road, touring regularly in the ’90s before finally releasing a new studio album in 2000 — their first in 20 years.
And now, the group that has always relished its subversiveness has done the conventional — gone on tour as a new album was released.
Not that Steely Dan or its performance Thursday at the Xcel Center in St. Paul was conventional.
Fagen, 55, and Becker, 53, didn’t exactly look at home onstage. Like the introverted, bespectacled studio denizens they are, they had sheet music in front of them for the songs that they wrote.
The first hour-long set was very controlled, rendered with the meticulousness of Steely Dan’s fussily precise recordings. The second hourlong set felt more like an organic band than a bunch of studio musicians. It proved that 7,818 baby boomers can still buy a thrill from these curmudgeonly Rock and Roll Hall of Famers.
Nerds preoccupied with hip notions from the jazz and beatnik worlds, Fagen and Becker became hip with their sophisticated mix of jazz chordings, rock dynamics, brassy funk, pop vocals and warped, irony-laced lyrics. In Thursday’s opening set, the jazzy notions prevailed with short solos, little spontaneity and a we’re-cool-never-let-’em-see-us-sweat attitude. “Babylon Sisters” got caught in a languid groove, and guitarist Becker’s first-ever lead vocal on the new “Slang of Ages” was a dreadful talk-sing rap about hipster jargon. Keyboardist Fagen, the lead singer, was not in great form either, his phrasing often clipped; he could use some Viagra for his voice.
The duo, augmented by three female singers and eight male musicians, rallied to close the set with a crowd-pleasing “Peg” and the energetic “Home at Last,” during which the musicians actually started to play instead of merely perform.
The momentum and energy carried over into the second set, which featured outstanding solos by drummer Keith Carlock and guitarist Jon Herington. The group turned “Kid Charlemagne” into a bright, brassy groove tune, and “Don’t Take Me Alive” was as emphatic as the title of Dan’s new disc “Everything Must Go.” “My Old School” was a sing-along rock romp during which Fagen held his longest note of the night.
There was one move that defied Dan’s usual pretzel logic: Becker taking over lead vocals on “Haitian Divorce,” which had a cool reggae groove, but his singing was so dispassionate it sounded like he didn’t give a dan.
Some fans may have been disappointed about the omission of such FM radio staples as “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” But they would be thrilled if the seldom-seen Steely Dan, which last played the Twin Cities in 1996, came back and did it again.
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