Everything Must Go

by

Steely Dan

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A mere 3½ years since the release of Two Against Nature, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker return with a new set of tunes, an encouraging sign for any Steely Dan fan.

Any album that these guys release is going to get my business, but as with Nature, this new one doesn't scale the heights of the seminal Aja or the equally impressive Gaucho albums. But that familiar Steely Dan sound, replete with succulent horn sections, twisting guitar licks and seductive background vocals, is here in force. It's the real deal, and it will soothe that certain nerve in a Dan fan that only their music can salve.

Unlike many of their prior albums, this one was recorded with an ensemble of musicians that don't change much from one track to another. Returning from Nature are guitarist Jon Herrington, vocalist Carolyn Leonhart and her trumpeter brother, Michael. Old SD stalwart Hugh McCracken returns to add some crispy guitar licks of his own. Fagen sings all but one track's lead, and is a little more present on keyboards than he was last time. Becker plays all bass, all solo guitar, and sings "Slang Of Ages".

A few of the songs on this disc seem to go back over previously-traveled territory. "Blues Beach", promoted for radio airplay, bears more than a passing resemblance to "Tomorrow's Girls", from Fagen's Kamakiriad album. "Pixeleen" and "Lunch With Gina" evoke memories of "Negative Girl" and "Almost Gothic" from the Nature disc.

The other radio-promoted song, Everything Must Go", has a good beat and you can almost dance to it; but the best song on the 42-minute disc is one that you'll have to hear on your own: with a title like "Godwhacker", it's a safe bet that it won't be filling the airwaves. Yet, it, more than any tune on the disc, will satisfy the thirst for more tunes in the vein of "Peg" or "I Got The News".

Twenty years between Gaucho and Nature, and now only 3½ years until Everything Must Go. At this rate, we should get a new round of Becker and Fagen before the end of 2006. Unless, as the title track of this disc suggests, they're "goin' out of business, everything must go".

If this is a "love it or hate it" album, count me in the hate-it camp. Steely Dan is one of my top 2 or 3 favorite groups; I began listening to their stuff 30 years ago and began playing their songs in jazz and fusion combos 25 years ago. Everything Must Go can't hold a candle to any of their earlier work. With 200+ reviews posted already, you can read plenty of longer discussions of why, so here is the short version: Almost everything about the music -- the vocal melodies, chord progressions, tempos, instrumentation -- has a deathly sameness to it, both across songs and within songs. This is either forgettable background music or, if you work _really hard_ at listening, a professionally crafted platform for still-great lyrics. I don't know why anyone with a Steely Dan collection would play this album rather than any of the earlier ones after the first few listens.