21st century Dan
Steely Dan’s last two studio albums, Two Against Nature (2000) and Everything Must Go (2003), are anomalies. The music is stellar, at or near the level of the band’s best early work, but it’s almost unknown, even among fans. (Back in 2011, one night of a weeklong gig at the Beacon in New York City was supposed to highlight songs from these two albums—the program was called “21st-Century Dan”—but the idea was dropped when almost nobody bought advance tickets.)
A shame. , which marked left off: a streak of literary sparklers glossing oddball tales, usually about loss, illusion, or unfulfilled dreams, sung by a narrator who’s either blithely clueless or self-loathingly aware of his dim prospects, backed by doo-wop backup singers, skylark guitar licks, a hard-slam backbeat, and slick jazz horn charts— slick for some, but those detractors miss the point: It’s the contrast between the polished arrangements and the warbly narrator’s that sparks Steely Dan’s appeal. And, of course, there’s the wit, fashioned by the band’s co-founders and composers, Walter Becker (who died in 2017) and Donald Fagen (still going strong), both Bard Lit majors steeped in Tin Pan Alley and junkie Beat poetry, a cool-breeze brew for our dyspeptic times.
