Features Disc of the day
Steely Dan
Katy Lied
(ABC, 1975)
Last week's Dan gigs send MOJO reelin' back to their curveball.
Saw Becker & Fagen last Wednesday, at a Hammersmith Apollo show that pillaged my pocketbook but did nothing but stoke my admiration for the kings of jazz-rock snark (there's a great chat about it, here). Beautifully bookended by two versions of Reelin' In The Years - the first a radical reworking, the latter a faithful rave-up featuring original Reelin' axedude Elliott Randall (now a London resident) - it was joyous and energetic, with Fagen in excitable voice. Yet it was their version of Black Friday - all that stuff about grey men diving from the 14th Floor swollen in significance by the ongoing economic apocalypse - that's camped out in my forebrain and had me racing back to Katy Lied. Now I won't start a pub fight by saying their fourth album is their best - there's an equally strong case for each of their first six - but as a record its creators long dissed (unhappy with the effect of early noise reduction technology) it's perhaps the least openly celebrated. But Black Friday's saturnine boogie (Becker's guitar solo, emerging from the ample shadows of Baxter/Dias/Randall/Derringer, is killing) is just one plus. The nasty hangover of Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More is another. Then there's something bizarrely modern about Everyone's Gone To The Movies, from Jeff Porcaro's mechanistic rhythms to the fuzzy sax snatches that could almost be samples. And weirdest and best, Your Gold Teeth II: a surreal beatnik concoction built on melancholic, Vince Guaraldi-style piano. Sunny and black simultaneously, Katy Lied is the Dan album for London right now: too hot, too fragile, a cocktail of booze and anxiety dressed in hotpants and debt. The perfect post-boom album by the perfect post-boom band, anyone?
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 06/07/2009
Further Listening
Steely Dan – The Royal Scam (ABC, 1976)
Prefab Sprout – From Langley Park To Memphis (Kitchenware, 1988)
Thomas Dolby – The Flat Earth (EMI, 1984)
Previous Disc of the day
-
-
-
Boo Hooray - Haunted
Rumpled velvet pop from weary Scots romantics. Out on Monday!
6:00 AM GMT 04/02/2010
-
The Pernice Brothers - Overcome By Happiness
"Prince Valium" leavens the badness with Bacharach/Fanclub tune gold.
6:00 AM GMT 03/02/2010
-
The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights
Former pin-ups' last-gasp reinvention as art rock phantasms.
6:00 AM GMT 02/02/2010
-
Chet Baker - Deep In A Dream
"The ultimate Chet Baker collection", they called it.
6:00 AM GMT 01/02/2010
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
Comment on this post