Steely Dan: Two Against Nature

"Let's grab some takeout from Dean and Deluca/A hearty, gulping wine." It beats the hell out of "d'ya come here often." This kind of pithy line peppers the songs on Two Against Nature, the first studio effort by Steely Dan in nearly 20 years. But there's a fly in the Sauvignon. The rest of "Janie Runaway," the ditty that boasts the above gem, depicts its narrator as a lecherous old crone. On the album's first single, "Cousin Dupree," a similarly bawdy drifter takes a shine to a blossoming young relative: "Honey how you've grown/Like a rose/Well we used to play when we were three/How about a kiss for your Cousin Dupree."

The seminal and inscrutable duo at the core of Steely Dan, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, delight in these sorts of picaresque digs at the bourgeoisie, while not exempting their own hipster posturing from ridicule. The characters in Dan tunes run the gamut from ingrates like Dupree to players-about-town like the "Jack of Speed" (if you know your vintage Dan, think of him as a courtier in Kid Charlemagne's court). Every song features a glibly surreal wit that is downright literary next to most pop lyrics. It makes perfect sense for a group whose bandleader (Fagen) wrote his Bard College senior thesis on Hermann Hesse, and named the band after a dildo featured in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

Musically, Two Against Nature is just as obscure. On first listen, the crystalline jazz-pop comes off stilted and sterile. Great, you think: Becker and Fagen have assembled an elite côterie of New York session men who collectively coat some tinny little tune with an impenetrable lacquer of arpeggios and syncopations. It seems one big festival of self-gratification, of "Can you top these chops?" However, upon the third or fourth listen, some slippery sax progression or Wurlitzer trill works its way under your skin. Perhaps the shimmering guitar solo on the vampy "What a Shame about Me" will grab you, or maybe the opulent layering of wind and brass tones in "Almost Gothic," evocative of Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool in its oceanic chromatics. Porcelain harmonies float along with gently shuffling Latin beats and swaggering synthesizer vamps.

Yes, it's cheesy, but the whimsical irreverence of the lyrics and the musical virtuosity keep you grinning instead of gagging. Ultimately, Two Against Nature is anything but aloof. It reaches down from its pedestal and yanks you by the collar with masterful performances and immaculate production. It's shrink-wrapped genius, glossy but glorious. (Giant)

—Garrett Weinberg

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