Steely Dan

Widely considered Steely Dan's weakest effort, The Royal Scam actually remains one of their most enjoyable. No lasting hits here, but "Kid Charlemagne" updates classic gangster movies for the cocaine and 'ludes era while "Sign In Stranger" presaged Fagen's combination of film noir and Sci Fi that would resurface in the Kamarkiriad album.

With each successive album, Steely Dan's popular success and appeal become more
obscured by sundry admirers' claims of abstruseness and complexity. To some it seems
inevitable that the Dan will eventually produce the Finnegan's Wake of rock. And that's
silly: Steely Dan is trying just as hard as any random country/disco/metal band to capture
our attention, i.e., sell records. For all their jazzy influences, they are a florid r... More >

The first question is whether the melodic retreat represents a refusal to indulge the audience or a withering of invention. The second is whether the conscious choice of a jagged, pinched music is a wise one. As if in compensation, the lyrics are less involuted and personal, but in fact their objectivity intensifies Steely Dan's natural nastiness. Whether this narrowing of spiritual possibilities is willed or a symptom of the same chronic insularity that makes Fagen and Becker unwilling to tour, the result sounds a trifle arty and a trifle producty at the same time. Does it matter whether they call San Juan "the city of St. John" in reference to the apocalypse or because it scans nice? (Grade - B)