4 ms·

Steely Dan is one of my all time favorite bands. I have all of their studio albums and I listen to them often (I also have several of Donald Fagen's solo albums

Steely Dan is one of my all time favorite bands. I have all of their studio albums and I listen to them often (I also have several of Donald Fagen's solo albums too). It's pretty incredible to think that this band spent over a year in the recording studio to put together an album with just 7 songs on it and using something like a total of 100 different session musicians. This album is Aja. I find it difficult to assign meaningful genre to their music. Plex categorizes it as "Pop/Rock". This shallow label seems to go well with the dismissive attitude that the article's writer held for so many years. Inaccurate at best. If you're not familiar with 'The Dan', give your ears a treat by sampling their work across a number of their albums. Don't limit yourself to just the most popular songs like "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" or "Peg". Use headphones or a great stereo system and turn the volume up enough so that you can really enjoy the incredible sounds.

mturmon 3y ago
I can't do much better than this. I enjoyed the band a lot as a young adult, stopped listening for a few years, and they have come back hard to my playlist for the last 15 to 20 years. Just a lot of depth to their music, words, and cultural approach. Besides Aja, I'd recommend Katy Lied, Gaucho, and Everything Must Go; and Fagen's solo Nightfly as starting points. For songs, "Kid Charlemagne" is partly a nice Bay Area piece, and "Any Major Dude" is necessary consolation when everything is falling apart.
NaOH 3y ago
>Use headphones or a great stereo system and turn the volume up enough so that you can really enjoy the incredible sounds. I'm already well-versed in the Steely Dan catalog, but I got a good reminder of this approach to music listening recently. My car is where I most often listen to music—the factory system is quite good, if certainly not great. I was listening to the latest album by a different artist, an album that overall hadn't yet done much for me. I listened wearing AirPods Pro, and the in-ear experience made for a much different experience. It was a clear indication that I should increase how often I do some higher-quality listening because on a day-to-day basis I'm getting diminished involvement which, over time, is dulling my expectations and the catharsis I discover with music.
DarknessFalls 3y ago
I'm just not a fan of his vocals, but I really enjoy "Rose Darling", which has Michael McDonald on backup. Their sound is very clean.
perihelion79 3y ago
For so many years I wrote them off as yacht rock or just being really good at setting a dirty 70’s feel I didn’t like. I kept trying to like them, and after the 3rd listening to “Can’t buy a Thrill” it clicked. That’s a perfect album.

mturmon 3y ago

I can't do much better than this. I enjoyed the band a lot as a young adult, stopped listening for a few years, and they have come back hard to my playlist for the last 15 to 20 years. Just a lot of depth to their music, words, and cultural approach. Besides Aja, I'd recommend Katy Lied, Gaucho, and Everything Must Go; and Fagen's solo Nightfly as starting points. For songs, "Kid Charlemagne" is partly a nice Bay Area piece, and "Any Major Dude" is necessary consolation when everything is falling apart.

NaOH 3y ago

>Use headphones or a great stereo system and turn the volume up enough so that you can really enjoy the incredible sounds. I'm already well-versed in the Steely Dan catalog, but I got a good reminder of this approach to music listening recently. My car is where I most often listen to music—the factory system is quite good, if certainly not great. I was listening to the latest album by a different artist, an album that overall hadn't yet done much for me. I listened wearing AirPods Pro, and the in-ear experience made for a much different experience. It was a clear indication that I should increase how often I do some higher-quality listening because on a day-to-day basis I'm getting diminished involvement which, over time, is dulling my expectations and the catharsis I discover with music.

DarknessFalls 3y ago

I'm just not a fan of his vocals, but I really enjoy "Rose Darling", which has Michael McDonald on backup. Their sound is very clean.

perihelion79 3y ago

For so many years I wrote them off as yacht rock or just being really good at setting a dirty 70’s feel I didn’t like. I kept trying to like them, and after the 3rd listening to “Can’t buy a Thrill” it clicked. That’s a perfect album.