Donald Fagen-Sunken Condos

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.

Reopening the case, Fagan competes with himself and can't win that one as he keeps sounding like Donald Fagan, but I think the album (CD) sounds great sonically with layers of funk buried in there, and I like the fact that all the songs have individual tonal makeup. Some recordings from "Dan et al" have this "spitty" cymbal tone that I find strange, but after a few listenings SC's weirdness is refreshing and the cymbals and everything else sounds nicely detailed on my system. For new stuff, what the hell else is out there? A note about "Fagan Faves", "Snowbound" on Kamakiriad has a fave GREAT bass tone.

This is definitely growing on me. From the get-go thought the lyrics were very good. Took some time for the music to open up to me (don't mean sonically). Especially liking guitar work by Jon Herington. Thinking it might rank above Morph the Cat in my little hierarchy of Fagen work.

I am also a big Steely Dan and Donald Fagen fan but haven't been able to warm up to this one. Other than the muffled midrange mentioned above, this LP has too much of a recycled quality, like we have heard these songs before. I remember one cut sounding amazingly like a song on SD Two Against Nature. Again, I always feel lucky when SD or DF release a new recording, but this one is too homogeneous and covers no new ground. Listen to recent releases by Paul Simon, The Cars, and the Doobie Brothers--all of them sound fresh and the cuts are not all woven from the same cloth. Maybe I will warm up to it with a few repeated listens.

Haven't heard this one yet, but for me, their last few releases have all been formulaic. They keep trying to remake Gaucho, or parts of Aja, but the songs just don;t have the edge that they did back then.

Time to move on fella's. Take a chance on something new and stop trying to just "cash in".