By A.D. Amorosi
For the Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — It is tempting to claim that the Donald Fagen — pop’s cheeriest misanthrope — who sold out the Tower on Saturday was little more than Steely Dan without other-half Walter Becker.
Fagen’s lyrical concerns have the same apocalyptic sarcasm, yearning retro-futurism, messy romanticism, and midlife-crisis clamoring (was he ever young?) as the Dan. Solo songs featured that same nasal, winnowing whine and ticklish electric piano set upon layers of muted horns and elegantly frazzled Tin Pan Alley jazz-rock and R&B. There’s still that sense of maddening composure.
So Fagen is Dan?
Wrong.
Plainly stated: You don’t realize how much of Becker’s arching complexity (melodies, arrangements) figures into the Steely equation until so much solo Fagen is unveiled.
That wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily.
With a tight band of players and singers, a grayed Fagen jittered through the fallout-shelter R&B of “New Frontier,” the coffee-crying bop-pop of “The Nitefly,” and the stammering small-town soul of “H Gang.” Fagen was as sharp and squeaky a singer as his arrangements were gently frenetic.
Getting dating advice from Ray Charles through a bluesy “It’s What I Do” and rhapsodizing about the mirth of embassy politics and bathing beauties through the high-life shuffling “Goodbye Look,” Fagen was at his most wry. And the minor-key minimalism found throughout the tightly wound “Mary Shut the Garden Door” was far and above the evening’s best of show.
When Fagen lacked Steely Dan’s dramatic changes in mood and melody, he fell flat.
The sophisticated wine-bar funk of ” Green Flower Street ” and “Teahouse on the Tracks”? Nice, but tepid. The life observations behind “Snowbound”? Commonplace.
Lest you missed Steely Dan (and in the last analysis, Fagen gave you little reason to), the slow, syncopated skank of “Home at Last,” the smoky organ-grinded “Third World Man,” the speedy swing of “Here at the Western World,” and the grandly snide “Pretzel Logic” – all were perfect for Fagen’s rapier wit.
March 6, 2006
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