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"Two Against Nature"
Never so much a band as the slyly crafted
specter of one, Steely Dan's mid-1990s "return" to
live performance was as surprising as it was perverse. Steely
Dan previously toured only once, round about the era of Watergate,
pet rocks, and Shaft. A half-decade after there concert comeback
and a mere 19 years after Gaucho seemingly closed out their recording
career, the jazz-pop conceit of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen
deliberately dropped back into a recording landscape where they
weren't so much seasoned vets as alien ambassadors.They never
let a trite melody get in the way of a good story, whether their
protagonists are plotting some nefarious obliquity.A little more
musically languorous perhaps, its trademark cynicism now undercut
by hints of sadness and regret, this is nonetheless a album worthy
of the name. --Jerry McCulley |
Reviewer: pittsburghirl from Pittsburgh,
PA
...and I mean that like Cousin Dupree
meant it when he beheld the nubile Cousin Janine. I guess you
need to be a musician or 50-ish to "get" this CD. (That's
me.)I've become one of those people driving down the road grinning
(as I listen to Fagan telling me about "deliciously toxic"
chicks and the "dreary arcitecture of your soul"),
while other people wonder what's up with me. (If you don't grin
when Fagan sings "How about a kiss for your Cousin Dupree,"
or "what is it exactly that turns you off?" you don't
get ANYTHING about this CD, neither music nor lyrics. "What
a Shame about Me" is the worthy successor to "Deacon
Blue" for those of us old enough to have lived both those
lives and to know what it tastes like.THIS one is the worthiest
of successors to the Steely Dan legacy. Donald, I want to kiss
you on the lips. |
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