168. Steely Dan, "Can’t Buy a Thrill"

 

When an album is well-produced, you shouldn't notice the production at all.  It should make the music itself the star.  On the other hand, when an album is really, really well-produced, you can appreciate the production on its own terms and revel in it and be in awe of it.  I couldn't believe this album came out in 1972, because it sounds so clean and perfectly produced it's hard to believe it's all analog.

The sound is superficially jazz-pop?  Light rock?  Who knows?  Steely Dan is really its own genre.  Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who started off writing songs for other artists before making this, their debut album, both were obviously interested in all kinds of music.  There are traces of mambo and jazz, of course, and prog and swing and God knows what else.  This is really a music geek record that accidentally has bright and airy and poppy songs.

Let's take the first track, "Do It Again," an FM radio staple since the day it was released.  It starts with percussion, drums and what sounds like a cabasa shaker, setting up a silky, sinewy rhythm.  The vocals, sung by Fagen in his weird, nasally voice that is immediately recognizable, spin out a tale of vague menace about cheating and gambling:

Now you swear and kick and beg us that you're not a gamblin' man
Then you find you're back in Vegas with a handle in your hand
Your black cards can make you money so you hide them when you're able
In the land of milk and honey, you must put them on the table
You go back, Jack, do it again, wheels turnin' 'round and 'round
You go back, Jack, do it again

It has a wild, jangly sitar solo followed by a wild, pitch-shifted electric organ solo, and although it's almost six minutes, it just flies by.  In a lot of ways, it's the template for future Steely Dan hits, of which there were very, very many: an undefinable beat, a vibe unlike anything else but nodding to jazz and Latin music, Fagen's (usually Fagen's) weird-ass vocal, and incredibly talented musicians playing their parts perfectly.

Unlike later albums, this one features lead vocals by David Palmer on two songs, "Dirty Work" and "Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)."  Palmer was brought in because Fagen wasn't confident enough in his voice to do his parts live at this point, but his voice doesn't really work with the music.  It's too laid-back, too relaxed for the tightness of the recordings.  It is, if I may daresay, too yachty for this operation.

The other best-known song on this album is probably "Reelin' in the Years," with session guitarist Elliott Randall's famous guitar solo, recorded in one take and which Jimmy Page has called his favorite solo of all time.  The lyrics are suitably inscrutable, but refer to some kind of failed relationship.  "Only a Fool Would Say That" has a sleek mambo beat and a great Fagan melody.  I also like the aforementioned "Brooklyn," which works with Palmer's laconic singing somehow. 

I haven't checked to see if there's more Steely Dan on the list; I won't be surprised if there is.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yeah.