Steely Dan - Donald Fagen

There are sometimes artists who manage to unite, through their music, a myriad of fans of the most disparate musical tastes. Steely Dan belong to this category. Their music is a colourful collage of countless shades, a refined sound that holds together multiple influences, all converging and balancing one another with real artistry and perfect equilibrium. Every song manages to shine with a light of its own, even when it isn't among their best. Boundless elegance and professionalism pushed to the point of obsession are the main traits that give Steely Dan their strength: a musical entity capable of conveying a sense of brightness that extends across every listen. In short, it's like breathing healthy fresh air, because Steely Dan's "crusade" isn't one of innovation at all costs, or of any other lofty, profound ideology. Their mission, if we can call it that, is a rediscovery of old sounds — possibly smoky and in black and white, like an old film noir starring Humphrey Bogart — and the ability to blend certain traditions with more modern sonorities.

It's their love of music that drives them, the urge to play and the pleasure of nailing the right feeling on the right night, giving rise to a jam session built on improvisation and good taste. The arrangements are another of the Dan's secrets. It's a pleasure to listen to every one of their records, because behind every single song you can sense the craftsmanship these musicians managed to achieve, with little flourishes that, in just a few seconds, enrich and shape a melody, turning it into something brilliant.

Steely Dan (a name taken from Burroughs' "Naked Lunch") started out as a proper full band, but soon its members went their separate ways, and the group turned into a sovereign duo answering to the names of Donald Fagen — on electric/acoustic piano, keyboards and lead vocals — and Walter Becker, on bass and guitar, occasionally taking on lead vocal duties too.

Their first record is a little-known soundtrack, "You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It", but it's with their second album that their true debut takes place: 1972's "Can't Buy A Thrill", which already contains a knockout hit like "Do It Again" and receives excellent reviews. "Countdown To Ecstasy" confirms their promise: with this album, Steely Dan become spokesmen for a music that moves across various currents, resting on a solid, pronounced love for the most commercial — yet at the same time intelligent — strain of jazz.

"Pretzel Logic" (ABC, 1974), on which Michael McDonald (future Doobie Brothers) also sings, is their most varied record, the one where respect for the old and the urge to take risks reach a creative peak rarely matched elsewhere in the group's catalogue. There isn't a single weak track, since every one of these songs is a classic of their repertoire. Just think of track one, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", steeped in beguiling fusion sonorities, where everything revolves around a piano riff, with Fagen's raspy voice turning more relaxed, while distorted guitars in the background lend just enough character without ever overdoing it... It's all these notes, well-articulated and kept separate, almost suspended, with disciplined, perfectly distinct harmonies, clean in their execution, that give the impression we're in the presence of serious professionals even before we think of them as rock stars. "Night By Night" is another essential piece of this record: a modern funk number, intense in Fagen's vocal delivery, rich and sustained just the right amount by horns that are never intrusive but always evocative in sketching out the core melody; then there's the "extraordinaire" guitar of Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, growling away in the background before shedding genuine tears of pain in the central solo, while on percussion sits the then still-uncelebrated Jeff Porcaro, distinctive for his particular warm tone.

"Any Major Dude Will Tell You" is a little acoustic gem carried by a sweet, winking piano; Fagen's voice is once again beguiling and evocative, the piano counterpoints lift the melody until it almost floats in mid-air, while in the background a colourful (though never blaring) rhythm section lays down just the right musical carpet for everything else to stretch out over. "Barrytown", on the other hand, is perhaps the record's most commercial moment: a peculiar song, marked by an endless chorus, since the part that should function as the verse is so instantly memorable that the song reaches its emotional climax right away, without the usual wait that typically resolves itself in the middle section of a traditional melodic tune. "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" is a delightful reworking of a Duke Ellington classic: old bowler-hat jazz and images moving in jerky bursts like an old silent film make this track a wonderful example of good taste and perfect immersion in a hazy, bygone atmosphere... A filtered guitar speaks a language all its own and traces the melody of this instrumental piece, propped up by a wurlitzer redolent of old cabaret, heading toward a boundary marked off by a brief piano-acoustic and horn solo.

"Parker's Band" sits in a perpetual yet stable balance between present-day funk and a fusion only hinted at here and there through the opening guitar riff; the vocal is unusually tense for Fagen, especially given the relaxed atmospheres of this record, the rhythm is tight, and the piano peeks out, taking turns hiding behind the powerful pounding of the drums, while the chorus is a delightful little vocal passage unto itself, one that only seems, at first glance, to be a foreign body within the song's main melodic structure. "Through With Buzz" is a small song enriched by dreamy strings, at times almost classical in feel, smoothing over every rough edge; Fagen's dreamy, undulating vocal stands out. "Pretzel Logic" is an elegant nocturnal blues, introduced by electric piano and immediately seized upon by Fagen's vocal, who once again proves he knows every mood of rock inside out, in all its shades. The song slyly carries on until the appearance of a deeply "felt" Baxter solo, backed by a horn section, while sudden breaks alternate vocal passages with purely instrumental ones, leaving plenty of room for the record's supporting players too.

"With A Gun" plunges us into scenes of wild country rock, a world away from the dreamy, naive Nashville variety; the song is gritty, and the pedal steel hisses out notes that slither like snakes across arid, sun-scorched deserts. The rhythm section is no less impressive: a drum kit blazing breathlessly down through cavernous canyons, perfect for last-bullet ambushes. Once again, it's a lesson in style from the band, note-perfect here too, out of respect for tradition and a real feel for the genre. "Charlie Freak" flows smoothly over a monotone piano line that adds a few unexpected shadows of unease to the record's mood, the vocal steeped in uncertain tones, never quite letting through all the brightness that runs riot elsewhere on the album. And finally we come to the last track, "Monkey In Your Soul" which, as the title suggests, is an excursion into a soul sound that's remarkably fluid despite its paradoxical fragmentation — a gritty, abrasive soul thanks to sudden, sharp guitar slashes that clash against stammering saxophones, excellent support for introducing Donald Fagen's brooding vocal.

Overall, "Pretzel Logic" is an album that surveys many decades of Black and white American music, leaving their distinct traits intact, and at the same time an innovative record, because all this rigorous respect for its roots is perfectly blended into a sea of technology that's never cold or neon-lit. A living technology, always projected toward the future.

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10/11/2006