★★★★★
A band whose most revered recordings were made during a period of hiatus from live performance, it's easy to forget that Steely Dan's early years saw them flourish as a fully functional touring act. Here we have a live FM-radio broadcast recording of a typical Dan set from their last tour of the era, in support of the Pretzel Logic LP. As a summation of band's early years, the setlist is flawless...
- recordcollectormag.com
2014-02-27
★★★★★
If ever a record knew its worth, it was Aja, the sixth album by . Released in late 1977 when half the world seemed to be down the disco and the other half were pogo-ing, here came an album that oozed detached sophistication, using every trick that keyboard player and vocalist and guitarist had mastered over their first decade together...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Peg" from 1977's Aja, "Caves Of Altamira" from 1976's The Royal Scam and "Do It Again" from 1972's Can't Buy A Thrill. Absolutely essential remedy for those all-too-frequent, anxious moments after waking up at 3AM and inexplicably yearning for a Steely Dan fix.
- www.forcedexposure.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
With the release of Two Against Nature, Steely Dan came out of retirement with a recording that won them much critical acclaim, and a couple of Grammies to boot. Thankfully we didn't have to wait another twenty years for their latest release, Everything Must Go.Two Against Nature was a logical progression from Gaucho and keyboardist/vocalist Donald Fagen's 1993 release, Kamikiriad. Slick production ruled, with more extended pieces than found on previous albums...
- www.jazzreview.com
2010-08-23
★★★★★
When Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP lost 2001's Best Album Grammy to Steely Dan's Two Against Nature, the world gasped. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's first studio CD in 20 years was as crisp, witty and curdled as any of their previous seven (and, crucially, a big improvement on 1980's enervated Gaucho). But better than hip-hop's postmodern masterpiece? It was as if Marshall Mathers had been carjacked by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope...
- www.blender.com
2010-08-22
★★★★★
The title of Steely Dan's debut album may come from Bob Dylan's It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, and the band's name a dildo in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, but Can't Buy a Thrill, recorded in Los Angeles with the best session musicians money could buy, seems somehow only distantly related to rock'n'roll...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2010-08-22
★★★★★
Steely Dan Aja MCA 1977 In the movie Mr. Holland's Opus, Richard Dreyfuss, playing a high school music director, recounts his childhood memory of first hearing a John Coltrane album. He recalls how he hated the music, but couldn't stop listening to it. He played the album over and over again until he appreciated every note?until he knew it would be an inspirational force in his life. Steely Dan's Aja was like Dreyfuss' Coltrane album for me...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2010-08-20
★★★★★
Sound: Where do you begin with a band like Steely Dan? They have done so much during their lengthy career and their perfectionism in terms of studio engineering never ceases to amaze me. Everything has always sounded so perfect. So polished. So- impeccable. I have always looked up to Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, and their 5th studio album, The Royal Scam, got me initially crazed on this jazz fusion phenomenon. The music is almost, overgrown, even for Steely Dan...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2010-07-02
★★★★★
a piece of Mr. Fagen's band ("Bodhisattva," "Peg")
- www.robertchristgau.com
2010-06-11
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