Steely Dan
Two Against Nature (Giant)
Rating: 9 - R. Brookman
Detractors who call this a fly-in-amber
resuscitation of Gaucho-era Dan aren't listening hard enough. Sure, the tunes are
awash in the unmistakable cocktail-rock sound Fagan and Becker patented after Katy Lied.
They're also as sly and insinuating as anything either man has done since Fagan's outstanding
Nightfly album from 1982. But the real convincers here are the lyrics, which chronicle not
the enervated LA cynics who coasted through the late 70s with a couple obtuse singles and not
much else, but the explicit and downright lascivious ruminations of two fiftysomething perverts.
From the intergenerational, kissing cousin lust in "Cousin Dupree" to the implied
three-way in "Janie Runaway" to the midlife crises of "Two Against Nature,"
this is stuff that's sad, smart and kind of creepy at the same time. The Steely Dan who wisely
called it quits 20 years ago couldn't have achieved anything close.
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