By Chris Willman Entertainment Weekly Steely Dan’s reunion album Two Against Nature is a preternatural enough stylistic reprise that it won’t inspire a whole lot of conversions. If you already hate Steely Dan, you’ll view Donald Fagen and Walter Becker as regular Rip van Winkles, still as unconscionably slick as the day they dozed off. […]
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Do It Again, Steely Dan
By Neal McGarity Hartford Courant Two Against Nature Steely Dan Giant Records More an evolving musical concept than a group, Steely Dan enjoyed unlikely success in the hard-rock ’70s by smoothly blending jazz and rock on meticulously produced albums loaded with lyrical cynicism. Singer/keyboardist Donald Fagen and guitarist Walter Becker — working with a revolving […]
Steely Dan Retreats to 1980
By Ty Burr Entertainment Weekly Like a mellow, jazz-bo Frankenstein monster, it shambles out of the swamp of Baby Boomer Lite-FM nostalgia, brandishing tasty horn charts and plinging guitar solos, seemingly none the worse for having been frozen in ice for two decades, still devoid of a pulse yet somehow shuffling onwards… It’s the new […]
Aja-vu All Over Again
Twenty Years Later, Becker and Fagen Find the Steely Dan Formula Works Well By Larry Katz Boston Herald Say you’re a member of a bigtime rock band from the ’70s. Say you’re recording your first album of new material in 20 years. What in the name of Santana do you do to update your sound? […]
Walter Becker: Reelin’ in the Gear
By Ken Micallef Guitar.com In the history of ’70s rock the guitar solos of Steely Dan loom large. On such albums as Katy Lied, Pretzel Logic, Royal Scam and Aja, the odd-looking masterminds — guitarist/bassist Walter Becker and singer/keyboardist Donald Fagen — found ways to coax blistering performances out of bored session guitarists who had […]
1st album in 2 decades from premier cerebral jazz-pop duet
By Ian MacDonald Uncut Magazine There are two schools on Steely Dan: those who like the early poppier stuff With Tunes: those who prefer the later, purer stuff Without Tunes. Either way, it’s all one continuous cool third stream. This group (for, whoever its changing participants, it’s always a group) has consistently made the most […]
60 Minutes of Music that Rocks Their Worlds
By Vic Garbarini Guitar World Two Against Nature (Giant) is the title of the first official Steely Dan studio album in 20 years. It also sums up the subversive musical philosophy of keyboard/vocalist Donald Fagen and guitarist/bassist Walter Becker, the reclusive duo who masterminded Steely Dan’s radical blend of rock and funk dynamics, jazz harmonic […]
Steely Dan: The Second Coming
Chinese music always sets me free Angular banjoes sound good to me Aja, when all my dime dancin’ is through I run to you. From “Aja” By Walter Becker & Donald Fagen By Paul Zollo The Performing Songwriter We’re in Manhattan, a couple weeks before the final Christmas of the 20th century. Donald Fagen and […]
Steely Dan Stages Comeback for Ages
By Elysa Gardner USA Today NEW YORK — Pop-music comebacks often play out like soap opera plots as artists confront everything from personal rivalries and failed romances to squabbles with former business associates. By all indications, though, no such melodrama informs Two Against Nature, the first studio album in nearly 20 years from Steely Dan. […]
Review: ‘Two Against Nature’
By Joshua Klein Onion AV Club Steely Dan was one of the most curious — and, by nature of its mammoth popularity, most subversive — bands of the ’70s. Songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen refused to tour, choosing instead to retreat to the studio with some of the world’s finest session players to perfect […]
