#368 Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic

I found I was actually listening to Countdown to Ecstasy a lot. Really weirdly a lot. Guess I came to terms with my Steely Dan thing. Let's ride this all the way down.

This one loses a step somehow. Everything seems slowed down a step. There's pluck and piano saloon shuffle bits. There's thematic jazz influences in the form of Duke Ellington cover East St. Louis Toodle-Oo and Charlie Parker tribute Parker's Band. Then there's strings on Through with Buzz. To me it sounds like a band trying to branch out, trying to be more of a good-music band, but it seems forced, losing some of that wheels-coming-off dense energy that Countdown had. Some magic is gone.

The one exception is Charlie Freak, far and away the reason to even hear this album. It calls to mind Genesis, of all things, and not their 8 minute prog suites, nor their late-era pop, but their mini-pop masterpiece Harold the Barrel, with its narrative structure and rolling, loping beat. Charlie Freak pushes through 2:44 of relentless, one drunken-fall-step-stagger after another, sidewalk rearing, with a swooning oilslick kris of a guitar line.

Other than that? The album is fine, but it retains most of the other album's overslickness and too little of its energy 3/5

You might like this if: You like overslick, complex pop-rock, with a bit of an adventurous spirit. Or if you wish that Countdown to Ecstasy stretched its legs a bit more.