By Edna Gundersen
USA Today
Morph the Cat (* * *)
Donald Fagen
Fagen’s third solo album, and first in 13 years, completes an informal trilogy that includes the frisky ambitions of 1981’s Nightfly and the midlife inventory of 1993’s Kamakiriad. This time the Steely Dan co-founder dwells on mortality and various impending doom scenarios, but he never abandons the upbeat soul-jazz grooves and sardonic views that make his music wickedly appealing.
Amusing yet haunted, Morph skips from a sexy airport pat-down in “Security Joan” to love’s escapist comforts in “The Great Pagoda of Funn,” then retreats into “Mary Shut the Garden Door,” a paranoid yarn that could be about an alien invasion or homeland insecurity. Fagen’s powerful fusion of darkness and wry intelligence beautifully serves his imagined chat with Ray Charles’ ghost in “What I Do,” the deadly vignettes of “Brite Nitegown” and the creepy title track, in which a threat that “oozes down the heating duct … and seeps out through the wall” is clearly not a friendly feline. Fagen, on the other hand, is one cool cat.
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