Steely Dan
Everything Must Go

THE REVIEW

NOTICE TO PASSENGERS. We are about to enter a review turbulence with a very low level of objectivity. Fasten your seatbelts. Stay calm. Try to dodge hyperboles and bombastic phrases, and "adjust your expectations" for everything you will read from here on.

Three years after the dazzling and unexpected return of "Two Against Nature", these two old satyrs who advocate a sublime and polished AOR, intriguing, smooth, overly arranged, and perfectly played reappear with their usual brashness and with an air of someone who just happened to be passing by.

Perhaps Donald Fagen no longer has the voice he once had (to put it mildly...), perhaps Walter Becker has gotten a bit heavier, perhaps the production isn't the same without Gary Katz. But what could any of this matter to an old fan embittered by twenty years of waiting, a modern-day Florentino Ariza longing after a Fermina Daza who wouldn’t give in even at gunpoint? Someone who was ideologically, sentimentally, even sexually shaped by the soft and chiaroscuro atmospheres of "Aja", by the cadenced and shifting tones of "Gaucho", by the unsurpassable formal perfection of "The Nightfly"?

So, onward, onward with Don's ingenious modified blues, with "Steely Dan's chord", with the bridge that veers and takes the song elsewhere, with the untranslatable lyrics, genuine American slang tongue twisters filled with cultured references, with the omnipresent female choruses that stretch and fade every phrase (how many backup singers have you had in thirty years of career?), with the two guitars that converse, support, and tease each other, with the impeccable and vibrant brass section.

Among the best moments of the album: "Launch with Gina", supported by a sharp guitar riff, the lively "Blues Beach", the bittersweet "Things I Miss The Most", the futuristic "Pixeleen", which seems to have sprung from the grooves of "The Nightfly", the blues-gospel of "Everything Must Go", introduced by a muscular sax solo. Innovations compared to previous works: practically none. Pleasure, nostalgia, toe-tapping, and the desire to press the PLAY button again at the end of the CD: at its highest levels.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have exited the turbulence and the levels of objectivity are settling into normal values. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Thank you for choosing Jake Chambers Airlines. Until next time.