Katy Lied - Steely Dan [Audio CD]

Yet another big success for Becker and Fagen. This was their first album recorded with a different studio band tailored for each tune. The album reached #13, Black Friday broke the Top 40 and typically enigmatic tunes like Doctor Wu and Bad Sneakers became instant 'Dan fan favorites. The band remastered this reissue themselves and added new notes to the original liners, lyrics and graphics! The last of the truly classic first four Steely Dan albums, the 1975 Katy Lied also sounds like the best. While retaining a solid rock foundation, the music finds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen engaging their jazz influences more successfully than ever; Fagen's piano fills alone are some of the most impressive music laid to tape in the 1970s. The songs, too, rate with the team's very best, whether coolly anticipating global financial collapse ("Black Friday"), celebrating the legacy of a mob-hit victim ("Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More"), or letting the Dan's guard down with a pained three-minute survey of life on Earth ("Any World [That I'm Welcome To]"). --Rickey Wright