Steely Dan
Countdown to Ecstasy

THE REVIEW

In this second album (1973) by the New Yorkers Steely Dan, a usual array of people play and sing, as is typical of their projects. At the time, however, there was still a classic group core that performed regularly live as a sextet, soon reduced to a quintet after deciding to forgo the contribution of the lead singer David Palmer: the voice of the keyboardist Donald Fagen was too much more incisive, fascinating, and suited to the corrosive lyrics in their repertoire.

Together with that "Katy Lied," which would be released a couple of years later as their fourth work, "Countdown..." is their least successful album, somewhat rushed due to the huge success of the debut "Can't Buy A Thrill" and the limited time available because of the then-intense live activity. The two group leaders, the aforementioned Fagen and bassist Walter Becker, would find a drastic remedy to this starting with the following third work "Pretzel Logic": no more concerts for the next twenty years (!) and all happily buried alive in the studio, meticulously crafting compositions, lyrics, sounds, arrangements, performances, and mixes.

Since we are talking about Steely Dan, even their relatively less polished and successful album contains great songs. For instance, the opening track "Bodhisattva," where the disrespectful, urgent plea to a Buddhist guru by a guy with the problem of... selling his house (!) is rendered at an equally urgent pace and with pounding chords that then expand into the precise, characteristic, and priceless jazz-flavored harmonic openings that make their music unique. In the middle of the track, guitarist Denny Dias performs a remarkable solo, highly regarded by those who play and love this instrument: the bearded Denny be-bops frantically and swiftly through unusual chord changes and the resolute rhythmic breaks of his bandmates, keeping the effectiveness and interest of the notes he plays high the entire time, then passing the ball back to Fagen for another verse and finally to colleague Jeff Baxter for a second final solo (not as brilliant as his).

"Razor Boy" is resolved in contrast with a swaying Caribbean rhythm and inserts of vibraphone and pedal steel guitar, the country guitar of which Baxter is a master. "The Boston Rag" that follows is instead a resolutely rock mid-tempo, whose few and rigid chords sound quite unusual for this refined group with highly sophisticated harmonic progressions. Notable is the guitar solo (again by the mustachioed Baxter) over Fagen's dry piano chords.

Jazz returns to infuse the harmonic fabric and surprise the listener with refined melodic openings in the excellent and abundant (seven minutes) "Your Gold Teeth," a jazz blues dominated throughout by an exciting electric piano full of tasty undertones.

The second part of the album ranges into the insistent urban funky of "Show Biz Kids," with a very New York groove, one might say pre-hip hop, incredibly ahead of its time. The possibly most famous track of the album follows, the legendary "My Old School" inspired by certain unclear college misadventures of Fagen and Becker: the lyrics of Steely Dan are always fantastic, but to fully appreciate them, it’s practically essential to be born and raised in the USA, as there is just no way to fully understand the plethora of cultural, popular, historical, and news references, idioms, and double meanings that fill their lyrics without help from a well-educated American. Accessible to everyone, however, is the great feeling of Denny Dias on his instrument, which here dialogues and intertwines with the rhythmic frameworks sublimely, in what is undoubtedly his most famous career solo.

The very country-sounding "Pearl Of The Quarter" and the dark "King Of The World" close the album a bit quietly, telling oblique stories about characters from New Orleans and other Southern realities with the disenchanted and cynical style that is characteristic of Steely Dan, a lovable sponge-band capable of creating a pop all their own, drawing equally from jazz, soul, funky, rock, and folk and using them to tell memorable, acerbic tales of various humanity.