By Nate Chinen
The New York Times
A few minutes into its sold-out concert at the Beacon Theater on Monday night, Steely Dan uncorked a song of recent vintage. It was “Godwhacker,” from the band’s 2003 album, Everything Must Go (Reprise), and the lyrics blithely gestured toward a tale of vengeance, pursuit and, well, deicide. When the chorus arrived, Donald Fagen and a pair of backup singers offered a cryptic admonition:
Be very, very quiet
Clock everything you see
Little things might matter later
At the start of the end of history.
Ambiguous, portentous, slyly comic and irreverent, the tone was quintessential Steely Dan. So was the tune, with its crisp backbeat and chirpy rhythm guitar, not to mention those backup singers. But Mr. Fagen and his partner, the guitarist Walter Becker, seemed aware that their fans were tolerating “Godwhacker” more than they were enjoying it. After a quick round of solos across the band’s four-piece horn section, the tune came resignedly to a close. Next was a classic, “Bad Sneakers,” that elicited grateful cheers.
Neither Mr. Fagen nor Mr. Becker seems characteristically prone to nostalgia. During their heyday as paragons of subversive 1970s pop, they often sounded wary about the very act of reminiscence. But a catalog is a powerful thing: last year Steely Dan authorized a career-spanning compilation, and later this year there will be another one. Perhaps it was inevitable that a good portion of the show would feel a bit like a revue.
On a purely musical level, this wasn’t a problem. The sleek, airtight jazz-funk of Steely Dan’s prime has been modified only slightly, and it still goes down smooth. Mr. Becker kept his solos flinty and brief, occasionally yielding the guitar spotlight to the musical director of the tour, Jon Herington.
Mr. Fagen, on Fender Rhodes piano, played the same tricky chords that cropped up among the horns. And Keith Carlock pulled more than his weight on drums, pumping up the propulsion of the songs. It all reflected the trademark exactitude that Steely Dan once honed strictly in the recording studio: a steady conviction that the little things do matter, and not just later but all the time.
But even with such high-level musicianship, there wasn’t much discovery. (The jazz trio that opened, led by the Hammond B-3 organist Sam Yahel, sounded tougher and more inspired.) The few surprises were generally unwelcome: “Haitian Divorce,” a throwaway with a lead vocal by Mr. Becker, and “Dirty Work” fell flat, despite solid efforts by the singers Cindy Mizelle and Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery.
Elsewhere there were band staples — “Babylon Sisters,” “Bodhisattva,” even “Aja” — handled with competent command. The big exception, other than “Godwhacker,” was “Two Against Nature,” the title track from a 2000 album that won Grammys, including Album of the Year.
“Everyone’s wasted in this gruesome dream,” Mr. Fagen sang in his plangent and oddly captivating voice. “Not a one of them left to hear you scream.” As in so many Steely Dan songs, the darkness of the imagery was cloaked in the details of the music. It sounded as good as anything else in the show, but the crowd seemed eager to move on, and back.
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