By Kevin McKeough Chicago Tribune CHICAGO — If rock ‘n’ roll is a vintage convertible barreling down a back road from Memphis to New Orleans at 2 a.m., Steely Dan is a European sedan cruising the Pacific Coast Highway at dusk, its driver musing darkly on the foibles of humanity. Polished craftsmanship, technical precision and cool sophistication were Steely Dan’s […]
CD Adds Modern Touch to ’70s Hits
By Vit Wagner Toronto Star In one of the more peculiar ironies in pop music history, Steely Dan went from being a ’70s studio band that didn’t tour to being a ’90s road act that didn’t have any new material to plug. But, like a weird, cosmic eclipse that occurs every few decades, the group’s […]
Steely Dan Takes on Life in ‘2vN’
By John Soeder Cleveland Plain Dealer Donald Fagen doesn’t consider himself a dirty old man. But he plays one — several, actually — on Two Against Nature, Steely Dan’s first new album in two decades. “There’s a certain amount of denial in older men who say they’re not attracted to younger girls or to women other than […]
Steely Dan First in Irony
By Chuck Klosterman Akron Beacon Journal There is a logic to humor. Of course, how that logic is applied makes all the difference in the world. First, there is the logic of being silly, which is essentially the art of being obvious (if a clown gets hit in the head with an anvil, a 5-year-old child […]
Steely Dan Plays New Songs, Old Sound
By Dave Tianen Milwaukee Journal Back in 1979, a year of evil developments that included Three Mile Island and Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya’ Think I’m Sexy?”, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (a.k.a. Steely Dan) released an album called Gaucho. And then they took a break. “Back in the ’80s, we decided to go our separate […]
Steely Dan Takes Fans Down Memory Lane
By Candace Murphy San Jose Mercury News Every concert has its turning point. That point in the evening when the melange of notes, phrases and musical stylings that have tumbled out of those immense amps and woofers suddenly aligns and makes nothing but perfect sense. It is a point of unexpected delirium. Saturday at Steely […]
Steely Dan Goin’ For It
By G. Brown Denver Post DENVER –In the ’70s, Steely Dan’s sleek, studio-perfect sound defied all conventions. Pop hooks mixed with jazz harmonies and chording. Complex time changes. A flair for wryly observant yet cryptic lyrics. It made Steely Dan one of the most influential bands in the development of rock music. Now, Donald Fagen […]
Steely Dan: Still Reeling
By Chris Macias Sacramento Bee This is not typical Steely Dan mode. The group — founded in 1972 by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker — rarely tours and hadn’t released an album since 1980’s “Gaucho.” But Steely Dan has emerged from pop music’s shadows this year with a new album (Two Against Nature) and a […]
Steely Dan Bridges the Gap
By Steve Hochman Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES — “Here’s a tune from one of those albums in the mid-’70s,” said Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, introducing the song “Night by Night” on Tuesday at the Universal Amphitheatre. In recent Steely Dan tours, there would have been unmistakable irony to that remark, since there had been […]
Steely Dan Makes a Few Concessions
By Mike Weatherford Las Vegas Review Journal There are some things Steely Dan’s members will do to conform to the modern demands of music marketing. And some things they won’t. “We stopped short of Jay Leno, actually. I didn’t want to spend that sad a night in the aftermath of it, really depressed,” says singer-keyboardist […]
