Steely Dan’s music is a serious business – crafted, polished, full of word games and references to Proust and Freud. Much like the men themselves By John L. Waters The Guardian “I like the neon, I love the music,” deadpans Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen on “Green Book.” “Anachronistic but nice.” That might describe “Everything Must […]
Tag Archives | Recordings
Remembering ‘The Nightfly’
By Jim Clayton Bad Monkey X I missed the Grammys this year, since they aired while I was out on a gig. But my sources (one drunken friend watching a delayed satellite feed at 2 a.m.) described the momentary hush and murmur that fell over the audience before they burst into applause for Album of […]
The Guilty Pop Pleasures of Steely Dan
By Derk Richardson San Francisco Bay Guardian I’ve always felt a little ashamed about being seduced by Steely Dan. But I thought that was all behind me, reduced to the occasional nostalgic tug of hearing “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” on classic rock radio. Wrong. Steely Dan is back with Two Against Nature, their first […]
Two Against Nature Review
By Graeme Hammond Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun Strictly speaking, Steely Dan ceased as a functioning unit 20 years ago with the release of the exquisite Gaucho, which yielded “Hey Nineteen” and “Babylon Sisters.” Like partners in a well-mannered divorce, however, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen maintained warm diplomatic relations: Becker collaborated on Fagen’s futuristic Kamakiriad […]
Sophisticated Skank
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker return with the first new Steely Dan album in 20 years By Gary Kamiya Salon.Com Steely Dan slid like a malevolent ice cube through the ’70s, their complex music and insidious lyrics burning a cold tunnel through the decade’s soft, fatty tissues. The antithesis of punk, they were just as […]
Doing It Again
By Robert Christgau The Village Voice Steely Dan Two Against Nature Giant In 1980, topping off the active phase of their strange career as pop interlopers turned AOR powerhouses, Steely Dan scored their third and final Top 10 hit: “Hey Nineteen,” in which a class-of-’67 “dandy of Gamma Chi” came on to a girl too […]
Steely Dan’s ‘Two Against Nature’
By Jordan Hoffman LeisureSuit Media To anyone who thought that Steely Dan couldn’t be relevant in 2000, I have news for you: they were never relevant. To anyone who thought Steely Dan would’ve lost their outsider’s wit and poisonous sarcasm by 2000, I offer the opening line from “Gaslighting Abbie,” the first track on their […]
Steely Dan Lost in Groove
By Bruce Westbrook Houston Chronicle “Two Against Nature” Steely Dan Giant After a two-decade wait, perhaps we should be glad to hear any new album by Steely Dan. That seems to be the stance of many critics, who are making this the most hyped disc of the year so far. Hear! the smooth sounds. Exalt! […]
Review: ‘Two Against Nature’
By Brian Q. Newcomb St. Louis Post-Dispatch It’s taken Donald Fagen and Walter Becker 20 years to make another Steely Dan studio album, and two decades notwithstanding, it’s as if they haven’t skipped a beat. Amid the band’s trademark pristine jazz-influenced pop formulations, it’s not surprising to find lyrics that suggest the state of their […]
Review: ‘Two Against Nature’
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. […]
