Donald Fagen-Sunken Condos

Do you guys really think SC is a good sounding recording? I find everything, especially vocals, to have a muffled quality. The HD Trracks download is better in that regard.

So far, and I'm a huge fan of SD and DF, I find the album strong on grooves but weak, melodically. I'll see if I grows on me, though.

Donjr,

What I find a little disappointing about SC is, again, the lack of strong melodies, which adds to that "sameness," I think.

Look, the guy is an incredibly gifted composer and there are great songs on all his earlier solo albums:

Nightfly: Every melody is a gem; not a clunker on that whole album. "Maxine" and "Green Flower Street" are especially strong, IMHO.

Kamakiriad: "On The Dunes" is gorgeous, and the opening bars of "Springtime" are as lovely as anything he's ever written.

Morph: Strong title tune, and "The Night Belongs To Mona" is a truly remarkable song.

But again, what I find on SC is mostly catchy grooves... not much else. But I'm gonna keep listening to see if it grows me.

Just my 2 cents.

Okay, I now own this album as a CD, a hi-res download from HDTracks and as an iTunes set. And I must say something that as a Steely Dan / Donald Fagen fanatic since my high school days, I never thought I'd say: I hate this record. The sonics - while best to my ears on the hi-res FLAC download, still sound muffled and muddy to me. (RIP Roger Nichols!) And the writing is so below what DF is capable of. What a bummer.

Chazro,
Guilty as charged! What happened was this:
When the album first came out, I was in a hurry to hear it, so I downloaded it from iTunes. Then it hit me that without the album cover and liner notes, I was missing part of the experience, so I bought the CD on Amazon.
Then as I begin to listen to the album more, I realized that the sonic quality was far below what I was used to hearing from Steely Dan or Donald Fagan records. So I bought the high resolution download. (Which, by the way, seems to me to be the best sounding version so far.) I actually hit the point that you were talking about, however, when I considered buying the vinyl. At that point, it was like, "This is crazy. Why have four copies of the album I don't like that much?"
I think it's also partly that I have been such a huge fan for so long that I couldn't quite accept the idea that Donald would put out an album that I didn't like that much.
By the way, I agree with Marty that Walter Becker's 11 Tracks of Whack, is brilliant. There was a period of time a few weeks ago when Hat Too Flat (the chorus thereof) was stuck in my head for several days in a row. It also happens to be a really good sounding record, in its own, quirky way.

Rfprice: Yeah, I don't think this album would've made it past Roger Nichols (rest in peace). Where's the awesome clarity he brought to Two Against Nature or Everything Must Go? In the midrange that album sounds to me all airless and congealed. Or maybe my standards for SD/WB/DF albums are just unrealistic. By the way, I don't expect my system to levitate: too much danger of breaking a tube on my amps! :-P

Wolf-garcia,
I think it's deliberate. Somewhere on the 'Gon there is a thread about Morph when it first came out. Somebody posted that they took that CD to dealers to evaluate the low end performance of speakers, and somebody else in the thread jumped all over them saying that the bass on that album is bloated and exaggerated and should never be used to evaluate anything. I also have the vinyl and if anything, the bass on that version is MORE pronounced!

Really interesting article, thanks for posting the link, Onhwy61!

Okay, so what I now know is that Sunken Condos sounds all closed in, muffled and dry because that's the sound they were going for. Which mystifies me completely, but there you go.