By the time of this fourth Steely Dan album it was more clear than ever the kinds of districts to which the act was headed: a studied jazz sheen, all studio performances, and no further live appearances ever (though that latter would change some two decades or so later). I missed the instincts for pop architectonics, and even more the humor, oblique acumen, and small but durable wonders offered up by the lyrics. But they still had enough juice to make it worth hanging on a while longer. If this is not up to the pleasures of the second and third albums it's certainly got its own bag of tricks. The various licks and increasingly tasty production flourishes remain put to the service of concrete and interesting points of view, often telling little stories set into unique tableaus, evincing a nice sense for decoration from the interior of a dollhouse—a surprising pattern of wallpaper, an interesting cut to the tiny furniture pieces, an admirable Turkish rug, five by six inches. Like an early Scorsese picture, "Bad Sneakers" pines from the inside of one kind of institution or another, jail or hospital, for better days on the street with friends, "stompin' on the avenue by Radio City with a transistor and a large sum of money to spend." "Rose Darling" does something similar with a sorely missed fuck buddy, sorely missed in the moment at any rate, while "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More" briefly apes the pimp life. And "Doctor Wu," perhaps set in Vietnam, rings down the curtain on the mercies, tender and otherwise, of heroin addiction, a tale told all aslant, yet gently, as it must. Hard not to feel that one. And that's just the first vinyl side, admittedly the better of the two. But you get the idea—a nice one to get close to.
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