The duo’s first studio album in 20 years builds on firm foundations
By Marty Hughley
Portland Oregonian
PORTLAND, Ore. — In a satirical letter posted on their Web site, Steely Dan principals Donald Fagen and Walter Becker announce their plan to “change the name of the band from ‘Steely Dan,’ which we are sick to death of by now anyway, to ‘The Content Partners,’ which is fresh, which is edgy and which is absolutely guaranteed to make the New Paradigm bigwigs at Way-Oh-El [Warners/AOL — get it?] stand up and take notice of who we are and what we are about.”
They are — for now at least — only joking. And instead we have a brilliant new example of the old Steely Dan paradigm at work. Twenty years after their last studio album, the dynamic duo of sophisticatedly subversive pop has returned to active duty, and returned to form, with Two Against Nature. Due out Tuesday, the album is the long-awaited result of a Steely Dan reunion that began with a handful of mid-’90s tours. And if in many respects it picks up where “Gaucho” left off at the grim dawn of the Reagan era, it brings new energy to one of the most fruitful musical treasure hunts ever.
In a way, Steely Dan is hardly more out of step with the age of rap/rock and media consolidation than it was with the post-hippie hedonism of the ’70s rock world. Cynical, sardonic lyricists, thoughtful, jazz-inspired composers and notoriously meticulous studio craftsman [“At one point we worked nine hours on one four-bar insert,” session guitarist Hiram Bullock is quoted in the book Cult Rockers], Becker and Fagen developed one of that decade’s most distinctive sounds. Over those years, their hits moved from the moody if straightforward pop of “Do It Again” to skewed yet hook-filled constructions such as “Peg.” But it was album tracks, such the expansive tone poem Aja, and the duo’s savvy use of high-profile sidemen, that cemented their reputation as innovators and created a cultish following.
Two Against Nature was three years in the making, yet it doesn’t sound as fussed over as Aja and Gaucho. In its cool sonic surfaces and the tight integration of groove, chordal movement, melody and embellishment, it most closely resembles Gaucho [and Fagen’s 1993 Becker-produced solo album Kamakiriad]. But whereas the swan song of the duo’s earlier career seemed cautious and enervated [critic Robert Palmer once complained that the group’s music sounded “like it was recorded in a hospital ward”], there’s a comfort and confidence that surge through the new work.
Of course, that cult following will be comparing Two Against Nature with the peaks of the past: Larry Carlton’s sidewinder solo on “Kid Charlemagne,” Steve Gadd’s rolling-thunder drum colorations on “Aja,” every blessed note of the Katy Lied album. But Steely Dan Mark II relies less on hired guns, with Becker playing most of the bass and guitar and Fagen handling the lion’s share of keyboards. The songwriting itself is stellar through most of the nine tracks, and even when the melodic resolutions seem a little flat, the detail work — such as Dean Parks’ deliciously articulated guitar figure at the end of “Negative Girl” — is plenty to make listening worthwhile.
Thematically, the duo retraces familiar ground, but with a characteristic combination of wit and indirection that keeps things fresh. The disillusioned protagonist of “What a Shame About Me,” perhaps the strongest track here, is kin to characters from such earlier songs as “Deacon Blues.” Drugs as personified bad guy rear their head in “Jack of Speed.” The aging-Lothario scenarios of “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies,” “Hey Nineteen,” etc., are revisited here in the funny single “Cousin Dupree” and slightly creepier “Janie Runaway.”
And for those who relish the Dan’s famous inscrutability, there are songs such as “Gaslighting Abbie.” Over a sly, wickedly funky groove by Becker on guitar, Ricky Lawson on drums and the band’s remarkable touring bassist Tom Barney, Fagen sings an elliptical lyric charged with sexuality, menace and deviousness. Apparently, it’s about a man who plots with his illicit lover to drive his wife crazy through a prank campaign including drugging her tea, putting 15-watt bulbs in all the light fixtures and stealing her miniskirts.
With content like that, the Steely Dan partners clearly are still working within a paradigm all their own.
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