Slick, groovy, immaculate. Sonic perfection, auditory ejaculation - my ears are but a bunghole, and if my listening habits are any indication, the Burroughs-inspired titular dildo has turned brown from the thrashing Becker and Fagen have unleashed on me pooper over the years. It hurts to fart, but its hurts so good, kind of like the down and out losers featured in the jazz rock duo's classic songs. You love to feel their pain. Kinky.
Enter the seedy underbelly of
The Royal Scam, the peak of the Dan's cynicism and trademark snark. Managing a delicate balancing act between the glossy studio wizardry of
Aja and the group's earlier work, here we have the Dan album for guitarists. Session player Larry Carlton dazzles with his slickness, his licks cool and tasty, his solos dripping and oozing with the feel and the soul, it grooves but has a sinister feel, like a shark who joined a jazz band. No one knows he's a shark until he bites - a great example would be the shredder's delight that is "Don't Take Me Alive." Powerful stuff.
Lyrics in popular music and rock is typically ***e, crapola of the lowest order. For the more literary of listeners out there, Steely Dan are at your service. There is beauty, sadness, humor, and most of all ***ing
humanity within these characters. Bits of you and I are found in each snapshot. Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, Robert E. Howard - these wordsmiths would have listened to Steely Dan had they been given the chance. The title track farts on the American dream, more relevant now than ever thanks to Donald Drumpf. The system is crap.
Give this album a spin, it oozes the feel.
