Tag Archives | Recordings

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 […]

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 […]

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? […]

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 […]

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 […]

By J.D. Considine Baltimore Sun When last heard from, Steely Dan was in a stylish funk. The year was 1980, the album was Gaucho, and the sound was slick and soulful, full of lithe, danceable grooves but spiked with enough jazzy sophistication to satisfy the brainiest of listeners. Even so, there wasn’t a lot of […]

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 […]

By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times You were expecting grunge? A little New Wave? Some hip-hop and techno touches? Sorry. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen haven’t spent their 20-year vacation looking for ways to update the Steely Dan MO. Insular and still one of a kind, they make the decades disappear with an album that […]

By John Bungey The Times of London Two Against Nature (8/10) Steely Dan (RCA) Few bands from the Seventies can boast a back catalogue that has held up as well as Steely Dan’s. From intelligent pop through to jazzy rock, there’s scarcely an ounce of flab on their seven albums of the era. If the […]

By Sean Daly Washington City Paper Two Against Nature Steely Dan Giant Twenty years have passed since Donald Fagen and Walter Becker — the dynamically detached duo known as Steely Dan — last played it brutally cool together on a full studio album (1980’s “Gaucho”). But reeling off all those years hasn’t made the men […]