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Steely Dan: Songs
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While hip-hop songs read like shopping lists, the old and rich duo Steely Dan take a sharp-eyed look at a tanking America, on a set about people losing it all. The tunes are uniformly strong, though only the title track ranks among the group's all-time best. Lyrics like "if somewhere on the way we got a few good licks in/no one's ever gonna know" will never land them on Oprah.
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When a Steely Dan song came on the radio it was an oasis in a desert of calculated fairy floss. It lengthened the moment and stretched those few minutes into an almost eternity. Like crystal stream water in a hot wind. segue into "Hotel California".
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Steely Dan's lyrics contain subtle and encoded references, unusual (and sometimes original) slang expressions, a wide variety of "word games" and intriguing lyrical choices and constructions of considerable depth. The obscure and sometimes teasing lyrics have given rise to considerable efforts by fans to explain the "inner meaning" of certain songs.[21][22] Jazz is a recurring theme, with references abounding in their songs, and there are numerous other film, television and literary references and allusions, such as "Home At Last" (from Aja), which was inspired by The Odyssey.
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On Two Against Nature, that extra touch of Steely Dan mastery manifests itself as funky backbeats, sparkling harmonies, and occasional horn solos. In the case of "Gaslighting Abbie," it's all three aspects that blend together so harmoniously. The upbeat blend of the funky keyboard beats and the jubilant horn solos run rampant throughout the nine-song disc, giving a kind of character and spirit that is not often seen in albums produced today.
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In 1972, ABC sent out promotional copies of Steely Dan's first single, "Dallas" backed with "Sail the Waterway." It is unclear if "stock" copies were ever released to the general public, and if they were, the single sold so poorly that promotional copies are more abundant today (whereas the reverse is true for most releases). Neither song has ever been included on a compilation or album of any kind, or re-released in any form, with few exceptions: a 12" European EP titled "Plus Fours" - this 1978 EP features "Dallas," "Sail the Waterway," "Do It Again," and "Haitian Divorce." "The Probe Family Sampler" - released by Music for Pleasure in the UK - included "Dallas."
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What this is is a collection of subversively jazzy tunes which delights in its own cleverness (lyrical and otherwise), and which probably finds its closest companion -- among previous Steely Dan albums -- in Pretzel Logic. The album finishes on a limp note musically, but as a rounding-up of what is one highly conceptualized piece of music indeed, it couldn't have been more precious, as the narrator of the title track mourns the dissolution of what is likely a '90s-era dot-com, moving "To dissolve the corporation / In a pool of margaritas" while the piano man laments this sad swan song to commerce. And what better way to go out, at least for the time being, for this group of high-concept ironists who have always found their severest preoccupation in what's timeless?
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