By Rashod Ollison
The Virginian-Pilot
Steely Dan’s eternally hip, gloriously complex sound becomes more alluring with repeated listens. Sure, the cryptic lyrics, which Donald Fagen often sang with a dollop of sarcasm, still leave you scratching your head after all these years.
But more than four decades since Steely Dan’s pop heyday, its meticulous synthesis of progressive jazz, rock, urban soul and pop remains fresh. The tricky time signatures, bebop-dipped harmonies and Fagen’s snarling, fly-white-guy soul vocals push the acerbic pair to another level.
To borrow a euphemism from hip-hop, where the group has been liberally sampled, Fagen and Walter Becker are “dope.”
Here’s a list of essential albums that best crystallize the duo’s highbrow downtown sound.
“Pretzel Logic” (1974): Featuring “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” the group’s biggest pop single, the album finely streamlines the musical complexities that meandered on the previous effort, 1973’s “Countdown to Ecstasy.” Elements of blues and jazz anchor much of the music, as the lyrics bristle with snide, sometimes humorous wordplay. The spot-on production feels fluid and less self-consciously sophisticated than on subsequent albums.
“Katy Lied” (1975): In perhaps the group’s jazziest effort, the musicians’ technical proficiency is highlighted in airtight arrangements. Beneath the seductive melodies, the album stings with songs about bleak economics (the eerily prophetic “Black Friday”) and adolescent alienation (“Any World That I’m Welcome To”).
“The Royal Scam” (1976): Critics initially dismissed this album because of the cynical, sometimes mean-spirited lyrics. The group’s biting, left-of-center take on fading drug dealers (the funky “Kid Charlemagne”), confused criminals (the dark “Don’t Take Me Alive”) and other unsavory characters makes it one of the group’s starkest efforts. The gleaming arrangements, still jazzy but steeped more in rock, sweeten lyrical bitter pills.
“Aja” (1977): When folks refer to Steely Dan’s musical meticulousness, they’re often talking about this studio masterpiece. The clean sound of the record won a Grammy for best engineered nonclassical recording. Fagen and Becker essentially added a high pop gloss to the jazz-rock fusion Miles Davis introduced nearly a decade before on the landmark “Bitches Brew.” Despite its studied, almost antiseptic production, the music retains an immediate vibrancy. Lyrically, the duo is more abstract than before. After countless listens, I still have no clue what the title track is about. But it’s one of Steely Dan’s most accomplished jazz tunes, featuring a knockout tenor sax solo by the illustrious Wayne Shorter. Fagen and Becker reached their peak with the seamless and catchy “Aja.”
“A Decade of Steely Dan” (1985): After “Aja,” the duo released 1980’s “Gaucho,” which featured the brilliant hit “Hey Nineteen.” But what had been an exciting musical mix just a few years before came off as labored and too deliberate. This greatest-hits collection is a concise summary of Steely Dan’s creative period, between 1973 and 1980.
“Two Against Nature” (2000): Although not as essential as the classic ’70s albums, this CD is still an elegant effort that updates the clean, intricate Steely Dan sound. Fagen and Becker reunited after 20 years away from the studio. Critics loved it, and fans bought more than 2 million copies. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, the duo won album of the year, beating out Eminem, whose controversial “Marshall Mathers LP” was the strongest contender that year.
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