#754 Steely Dan - Can't Buy a Thrill

Let me steal the best line of amateur music criticism I've ever heard.

So there's this email thread about Steely Dan featuring Orion, the avowed Steely Dan; and myself, the conflicted critic asking about their merits. I enjoy the band's music, but I find that there's something unfun about it, something too controlled, something soulless, empty even.

Orion fires back: So you suggest that the songs are well-crafted but empty. I'm suggesting instead that they are well-crafted and conveying emptiness.

Drop the fuckin mic. Orion out.

There's something to this: that Steely Dan is empty because they make songs about emptiness, about ennui, as Orion puts it: the regret that you feel when everything has gone well.

Dude knows his Steely Dan.

And this album is another Steely Dan album, differing only marginally from any of their subsequent albums. That's the double-edged sword of making this music that's architected rather than evoked, you can control the process sufficiently to put out a consistent, unsurprising product. If anything, this is even more sterile and even less fun than the comparatively spry Countdown to Ecstasy. The production is perfect, everything is hooky, agreeable, overslick and utterly unsurprising. It's a syringe, a glove, a dildo, perfectly designed to purpose. It'll make your ears feel good and your heart feel empty. The fact that that's a feature rather than a bug may or may not change your mind about its merits 3/5