Member:
Sean
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Sean)
Date:
8/1/2003
Format:
CD (Album)
Steely Dan's fourth album Katy Lied marked a departure from past methods and newfound musical growth. This is the first album Walter Becker and Donald Fagen made after letting their the band Steely Dan go. Gone were guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder. Guitarist Denny Dias was retained, but only to play a solo or two. In their place were some of the best studio players available. Folks like guitarist Larry Carlton and drumming legend Bernard Purdie appear here for the first time, they would play various roles on the albums to follow Katy too.
Those are not the only new names in the credits though, see Steely was no longer a band but a vision shared by Becker and Fagen. It always had been, but in the beginning they created a band out of necessity, once they were in a position to find better players and had the clout to get them to play on their recordings, the band was let go. Also, Becker and Fagen were fed up with touring so when the band disolved they used that as a perfect chance not to tour anymore. They wouldn't hit the road again until many years later, 1992.
So at this point Becker and Fagen chose different musicians for different songs on each album. No one group of players plays on every track on Katy. This is an approach the band would continue to use up through the Gaucho album. This cd reads like a session musician who's who of the 70s- Hugh McCracken, Chuck Rainey, Victor Feldman, Hal Blaine, Rick Derringer, David Paich, Michael Omartian, Dean Parks....the list is long and keeps going. All in search of the sonic perfection Becker and Fagen heard in their heads in advance.
Is it worth it? You will have to decide. For some folks this is the point where Steely started to get too slick. Some say they would just get slicker and slicker production wise as the years progressed, album by album. In fact they would set the standard that was aspired to by the late 70s. I think Katy is in some ways a throwback to the previous albums, it reminds me a lot of Pretzel Logic and is almost as diverse musically and as quirky; yet the uptown jazz/pop style they became known for by the end of the 70s makes it's debut here as well.
Tracks like the well known "Bad Sneakers" or classy "Doctor Wu" could easily fit in well on later albums like Aja or Gaucho. "Black Friday" is probably the best known track on Katy. It is a catchy, uptempo shuffle with lyrics that fly in the face of the musics mood. Talk of men diving from the fourteenth floor when that fateful day arrives paints a morbid picture. Steely Dan wordplay at it's quirky and ironic best. Much of this album benefits from that.
Tracks like "Throw Back The Little Ones" and the ode to 8mm porn "Everyones Gone to the Movies" are as oddball as the weirdest cuts on Pretzel Logic or Countdown. There are a couple blues based numbers here for your enjoyment too. One is the downtown blues of "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More", which gets the record for longest song title in their catalog. And the other is the sleek, uptown, jazz influenced "Chain Lighting".
This is not the most even album the band would make and it is clear they were in a state of transition. Nevertheless some songs here are among the bands very best and that makes Katy Lied essential, eclectic listening.
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