Steely Dan

Every 1970s hipster with a waterbed seemed to own this album without realizing that Donald Fagen's cutting barbs were aimed directly at them. Jazzier and with less blistering rock guitar than before, the eternal hit "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" took its piano hook from Horace Silver's "Song For My Father." "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" is an unheralded gem.

Steely Dan is the most improbable hit-singles band to emerge in ages. On its three albums,
the group has developed an impressionistic approach to rock & roll that all but abandons
many musical conventions and literal lyrics for an unpredictable, free-roving style. While
the group considered the first album, Can't Buy a Thrill, a compromise for the sake of
accessibility, and the second, Countdown To Ecstasy, to emphasize extended in... More >

This album sums up their chewy perversity as aptly as its title--all I could ask is a lyric sheet. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" blends into AM radio with an intro appropriated from Horace Silver, while the other side-opener builds a joyous melody of Bird riffs underneath a lyric that invites one and all to "take a piece of Mr. Parker's band." The solos are functional rather than personal or expressive, locked into the workings of the music. And even when Donald Fagen's voice dominates as it comes out of the speakers it tends to sink into the mix in the mind's ear--recollected in tranquility, the vocals seem like the golden mean of pop ensemble singing, stripped of histrionics and displays of technique, almost . . . sincere, modest. Yeah, sure. (Grade - A+)